


Nocturnal creatures

by kate_the_reader



Category: Inception (2010)
Genre: Arthur is a dream thief, Blood Drinking, Eames is a vampire, Human/Vampire Relationship, Kink Negotiation, Light Bondage, Light Dom/sub, M/M, Morally Grey, Rating has changed, Suicidal Thoughts, Vampire Bites, Vampire!Eames, canon adjacent, dream share, thoughts of self harm
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-07-31
Updated: 2021-01-05
Packaged: 2021-03-06 01:41:48
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 20
Words: 71,898
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25635241
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kate_the_reader/pseuds/kate_the_reader
Summary: Eames is a vampire who hates his fate and thinks often of ending it all -- until he meets an interesting, enigmatic, TERRIFYING man who pierces through the ennui cloaking him. Does he dare to have what he has never had? And is that even possible? Eames is afraid of what he is capable of. Arthur is not.
Relationships: Arthur/Eames (Inception)
Comments: 51
Kudos: 57
Collections: Inception Big Bang 2020





	1. Quarter past midnight

**Author's Note:**

> This fic was inspired by the experience of listening to Bastille's Doom Days alone in a dark car, late at night. It's taken several turns since then, but the album is well worth a listen.
> 
> It's a mostly written WIP, I don't plan to keep readers waiting very long. (That said, shit happens, especially this year.)

Tail-lights streak the tarmac like blood washing down a drain if you close your eyes just enough in the backseat of a car speeding across the city after midnight.

Eames lets his head loll against the leather, bored by the conversation in the front seat, bored by yet another night in yet another club, bored by existence. And isn’t that a sick joke. 

He lets his eyes fall shut, the street lights flickering across his lids, the wind of their passage caressing his skin. Nothing else will. He won’t allow it.

He touches them as little as possible, a brush of fingers across a jawline, tilting a chin just so. If they realise how cold his mouth is they never say, mesmerised by his charm, his glamour, his cruel power. And if they think, when they finally awake from their swooning daze, that the mark he has left is not like those left by any previous lover, well, his other gift to them is an inability to pay it much attention, an opacity that resists thought. So they wear a scarf, wear a high collar, stay in until it fades and forget the man who placed it there. He always wipes any trickle of blood with a thumb, smears it across his mouth like lipstick ruined by night’s end. None of them ever see him leave, careful to go in the darkness before dawn, striding along empty streets, avoiding the eyes of the others out at this time — the luckless, the bedless, peering out from darker alleys, looking up from nests in doorways. On a point of principle he never approaches them, no matter how desperate he is, no matter how desperate they might be.

They are also nocturnal creatures.

The conversation in the front seat has fallen away, drowned by the beat from the speakers pounding through his brain, expunging thought — an advantage. Darkness engulfs the streetlight flicker, the speedwind stills, the car has stopped. The music clicks off abruptly. He opens his eyes. Now the fastcar delirium is stilled it's obvious they are drunker than he realised, slumped in the front seats. The thought of following them as they stumble into their building and stand swaying while the lift creaks down, of propping them in the corner as it groans upwards, any beauty they had in the glamourglow of the club lights drained under the harsh fluorescent; of waiting while they fumble a key into a lock, giggling as it slips from clumsy fingers; of entering a small and likely squalid flat strewn with clothes rejected earlier; of listening to them fumbling in the kitchen, searching for glasses and a bottle to stretch the evening further; of manoeuvring them — why had two seemed like a good idea? — towards a bed … 

He opens the car door.

“Actually,” he says, “let’s not. Another time.”

The driver peers up at where he’s standing on the kerb. “No man. Come up … ’nother drink … and … what you said.”

“Yeah,” says the other, leaning across the seat. “Early yet … young … night.”

“Nah. Not tonight. Take care.” And isn’t that a sick joke.

He walks away from them, back towards the streetlights and crowded pavements. It is early yet. The night is young.

It always is, until it isn’t. He doesn’t miscalculate, get caught by the dawn. He knows, in the very fibre of his being, of his not-being, what time it is, feels the loom of the light as sailors say they feel the loom of the land. 

But the thought of another hunt, another conquest, someone less drunk — less likely, here, now — the thought is one of deepest weariness, of greyest ennui. He can’t. Not tonight.

He'll walk and then, at the last possible moment, turn for home, opening the door of his flat just before the first hint of sunrise, when the sky is no colour and the streets empty of nocturnal creatures. Day people are not yet abroad, only the liminal ones — nurses and cabbies, delivery drivers and hotel cleaners — the ones who start the city and keep it running. 

It's as close to daylight as he'll ever get. He's not sure why he tortures himself with its proximity — and why he is careful to slip inside, to shelter behind closed doors and drawn shades from the one thing he actually craves.

Craves the way an addict craves the drug they've forsworn, an alcoholic the burn of forbidden drink, a jilted man the merest glance from their once-lover.

Craves it far far more than that which legend says he should crave. 

By the time he turns the corner into his street, it's light enough to see to the end. He doesn't quicken his steps, knows exactly how long it takes to walk leisurely to the middle of the block, descend the steps to his basement, fit the key in the lock and open the door. As he closes it, the sun heaves itself over the horizon and sends a beam straight down the street.

Another night when he couldn't bring himself to go through with it. He will have to tonight. He knows exactly how long he can go without — learnt that by pushing himself further and further, only pulling back right at the very brink of annihilation. He doesn't know why he does that either. Why he goes on.

Inside the flat is no-light, blinds drawn tight leaving no chink. Little light falls to a basement anyway, and never any sun. He’d be tempted to raise a blind just a fraction, a millimetre, if sun struck a window, to allow a deadly blade to enter. Imagine the thrill! Imagine watching the knife edge carving across a wall, threatening pain. Imagine the temptation to extend just a finger into it, to feel its burn. His not-being can’t react the way his once-body would to such a fantasy, with a roiling of the gut, a stopping of the breath, a squeeze to the heart. But he can recall those sensations. Or perhaps he only thinks he can.

He flicks on a light — the irony of being allowed a facsimile as bright as he likes. There are some, the very old ones, who have never dared brave the full glare of the modern world, who believe only the dim light of candles is safe. He pities their shut-in existences in an era of so little true dark. They have retreated from humans, forced to remain far from cities with their never-dimming lights, imprisoned by fear. Are they tempted to fling open a door too soon? To raise a blind just a fraction, to allow a deadly blade to enter? He cannot know. There are some things never spoken of, never whispered to even the most intimate.

And he has never known another intimately enough to contemplate confessing.


	2. Bad decisions

Another night, another hunt. No point going out too early, they have to be deep into the night to fall under his spell. But he raises the blinds at least, allowing streetlight to reach into his cave. The sounds of passing feet, conversation, traffic, animate the space as he cannot. It’s not daylight or even dusk, but it’s outside light. Better than nothing. The old ones resist even this. The few times he has ever been into one of their homes, their lairs — he shudders at the memory — the air choked him, so thick was it with the dust of centuries. Would have choked him, had he breath.

He dresses carefully, choosing what he thinks of as his own clothes, his real taste, from before. Often, it is easier to blend in with the style of the day, or the place, but he always feels it as a loss, another thing taken away by his cruel fate. 

After he is dressed, it is still too early. 

If boredom could kill one who cannot die, the crushing tedium of this early-evening waiting — waiting for it to be late enough, waiting for them to be stupid enough, waiting for them to be drunk enough, waiting for them to be unwary enough to slip under his charm — might be a release. And isn't that a sick joke.

He could go out walking, watching them, the ordinary ones, the ones who live blameless lives of their own kind of tedium, the ones who hurry home from dull jobs to play with their children, eat dinner with their spouses, watch television, do a load of laundry and slide into a neat bed of clean sheets, hardly ever thinking about the dark beyond their windows, just outside their narrow worlds.

He could watch them, but the pain of exclusion is too sharp, the pain of never having such soft habits, never having a life of comfortable thoughtlessness, cuts like a blade. So he stays in, staring at the wall, watching the lights of cars wash across it.

Always lights, but never the one light he craves.

Finally, it is late enough, dark enough, to drag himself out. He lowers the blinds against the morning light, locks the door and climbs the few steps to the street. He can’t bear the thought of loud music — what passes for music now — tonight, even though clubs like that are the best hunting ground. There’s a casino he goes to sometimes. Losers can also be easy targets: a drink to soothe the pain, a few words of sympathy.

The club isn’t crowded, there’s a space at a blackjack table. He’s good at watching the dealer’s face, good at counting. Very good at remembering the cards — old habits, long practice.

A few rounds in, he glances up from the table and catches sight of a man at the bar. A dark-haired man, a neat man, a quiet man, a watchful man. Leaning on the counter, looking at the card table. There’s a glass in his hand, amber Scotch. It is difficult to watch someone who is watching you, but Eames is very good at watching. The dark-haired man raises his glass to his mouth, the barest sip, a mere wetting of the lips. Wants to stay a while, does not want to lose control. Not a target then, but he can look, when the man’s eyes — dark brown? black? — are not on him. He can learn a lot from covert glances. His clothes are neat, a little conservative. Boring, to be honest. He shouldn’t be wearing brown, of all colours. 

He catches the man’s eye, quirks an eyebrow, tilts his head: “Care for company?” The man nods, a barely perceptible gesture, no smile, but his eyes are intent. He nods to the dealer, pockets his chips — more than he started with — and stands. The man watches as he threads through the thickened crowd, and shifts, making space at the bar. The corner of his mouth lifts in the tiniest of smiles as Eames joins him, and he turns to signal the barman. “Scotch?” He’s American, but not aggressively so.

“Thanks.” The man is not drunk, he can’t fail to notice him not-drinking, but as he’s doing the same, he will probably respect it.

“Arthur,” he says, when the drink is pushed across the bar.

“Eames.”

“Like the Lounge.”

It’s a telling connection to draw. Most don’t. He nods. “Like the Lounge. And the chair.”

Arthur acknowledges that with a slightly higher lift of the corner of his mouth. Up close, he is older than he seemed from across the room. There are tiny lines at the corners of his brown eyes. Crows’ feet. His ears stick out slightly. He shouldn’t comb his hair back so severely. Eames can’t help it, this rapid assessment, cataloguing the superficial things. He raises the glass to his mouth, wets his lips with the remembered sting of the good stuff. “Laphroaig?”

Arthur takes his own sip, chasing the drop with the tip of his tongue along his bottom lip, nods.

Eames lifts his glass in a half-toast: “Cheers.”

Arthur’s smile reaches the other side of his mouth. “Cheers.” His eyes are still intent, Eames isn’t the only one assessing. “Do okay?” He nods towards the card table. He watched long enough to know.

Eames shrugs. “Not bad.”

“You’re good at it.”

“Lucky.”

“Good at counting.” Arthur’s eyes are still intent. He’s stating an observed fact, no hint of a “Gotcha!”

But if Eames acknowledges the truth, he will have given away a secret, and he doesn’t give away secrets. He looks away from Arthur, back towards the table, and shrugs.

“Sorry,” Arthur says, equably. “Too soon.”

When Eames turns to face him again, his glass is at his mouth and he’s watching over the rim with a complicated look in his dark eyes.

“New in town?” asks Eames, to move them away from the cliff-edge.

“On business.”

“Oh?”

How much will he reveal?

Arthur nods. “Not interesting, though.”

Nothing. 

“I should go,” he says. “Meeting in the morning.”

He’s lying, but it’s hard to know what he’s covering. He sets his glass down, the level of the Scotch almost the same as that in Eames’ glass. 

“Maybe I’ll see you here again. If you are still in town.” He’s not sure what prompts him to break his one unbreakable rule, and pursue.

“Maybe,” says Arthur. “Hope your luck holds.” He extends his hand. 

_Too soon! And who the hell shakes hands, these days?_

There is a tiny hint of challenge in his eyes. Eames takes his hand. It’s cool. He’s been holding a glass. So has Eames.

“Thanks for the drink.” The handshake is brief.

“Good night.”

Arthur walks off, back straight. His slicked hair comes to a point above his collar.

_Damn._

He stays leaning against the bar long enough not to accidentally follow him, then sets his hardly-touched drink down and leaves. He wants even less now to do what he must. 

He goes to a bar he knows draws the young and uncertain, those eager to accept an invitation — frightened, but eager. There’s a boy in a dark corner, watching. Not a child, he’s not a monster! (And isn’t that a sick joke.) It only takes two drinks before he’s following Eames into a toilet stall, tilting his chin up with his head against the wall. Eames doesn’t even have to touch his skin, the boy doesn’t notice the chill until it’s too late. His eyes go hazy as Eames thumbs the trickle of hot blood and opens the door, wiping it across his mouth, licking it off. He only took the barest minimum, just enough.

It’s not even late.

Usually he walks, afterwards. Energy up, blood singing in him, he walks and he looks. Not at them, at the lights. Wet nights are best, the yellows and reds and greens blurring, streaking like paint. Sometimes he walks all the way to where the lights are best, giant hoardings flashing with some product or other. He remembers when the Circus was entirely surrounded by signs of light. Before. He loved them then — so much colour in the grey, gleaming down on crowds hurrying under umbrellas — and he missed them when they were dimmed for the war. When they returned, it felt like an awakening. He loves them now, though he is nostalgic for their humbler beginnings. But you don't look up at them to notice what they're selling, you look down, at the streaks on the shining tarmac, pure light, pure colour.

But tonight he doesn’t want to walk and watch people, he’s seen enough for one night. So he turns for home much earlier than usual, retreating from the streets’ dark into the manufactured light inside. He’s seen all he wants to see, and he wants to see him again, so he finds the sketchbook he hasn’t used in a while, and a pen, and tries to recapture that face, those watching eyes, the way the tiny lines fanned out from them, the way his mouth slowly, slowly, oh so slowly gave away bits of himself, piece by tiny piece. 

If he draws him, perhaps he will be able to stop himself from seeking him out again, might be able to make tonight’s bad decision just one, and not the first in a chain of bad decisions. Draw him, look at him, draw him again, think about him. But don’t go looking for him again. Stay away from anyone you want too much.

“Hello,” he says softly to the face as it emerges from his pen. Those dark dark watching eyes, the mouth that seemed severe until he chased a drop of Scotch from it. Eames runs his own tongue along his bottom lip in recollection, but instead of the warmth of Arthur’s Laphroaig, tastes only the cold iron tang of the forgettable boy’s necessary blood. 

It is light behind his blinds when he finally puts down his pen. Arthur after Arthur looks at him from the sketchbook pages — the first Arthur, seen from across the room, intent eyes too distant to see properly, the first little lift of his mouth, the second, his tongue tracing his bottom lip in what must have been a deliberate gesture, his eyes regarding Eames over the rim of his glass, the lines fanning from those eyes.

Most of those Eames seduces and takes from are younger. Younger and drunker and stupider, incautious. Arthur, on the other hand, is cautious, calculating. Very far from stupid. Perhaps Eames could see him again. Perhaps he would not be stupid enough to fall under his spell.

That would be a risk. To both of them. But nothing — no one — has sparked anything in him for longer than he can remember. And he can remember a long time. 

As he lies waiting for unconsciousness to take him, he is almost certain one bad decision will soon turn into two.


	3. The waves

When consciousness returns, there is Arthur, looking down at him from the walls where he pinned the torn-out sketchbook pages. Drawing him, looking at him, has not done what he told himself it would, has not inoculated him against the desire.

He knows he should not, but he can’t help himself. Instead of going somewhere safe, somewhere temptation won’t be sitting at the bar with a glass of not-drunk Scotch, he goes back to the casino. He tries not to look too eagerly for him. 

He is almost relieved when he doesn't see that dark head of too-severely combed hair among the crowd. He joins a table and tries not to look around at new arrivals, but his concentration is shot all to hell; he’ll soon be in a hole.

And then behind him he feels, or does he smell him first? He wasn’t consciously aware of Arthur’s scent before, but he is now — the wool of his suit, the pomade in his hair, his light cologne — even among so many others. He turns. Arthur is standing behind his right shoulder, a pace back, dark eyes intent. His mouth twitches in that quarter-smile, but he doesn’t say anything.

The dealer clears her throat, annoyed, and Eames turns back to the table. He’s lost the thread, lost count, has no idea what will come next. In the game or in this odd dance he appears to be engaged in. Arthur remains behind him until the hand is completed and then makes his way to the bar, turning to watch again when he has a Scotch in hand. It’s pointless to continue losing, it’s not why he comes here. It’s not why he came here tonight.

Again he asks with a look whether his company would be welcome. Arthur raises an eyebrow: _“Why do you think I’m here?”_ as clear as if he had spoken aloud. Eames cashes out and moves towards the bar; Arthur’s smile is a half as he turns to the barman to order. “Hello,” he says, handing Eames the glass. “I’m sorry.”

“For what?”

“You seemed a little … distracted.”

Eames shrugs. But Arthur has admitted his interest, perhaps it won’t be giving too much away if he concedes his. “You’re a little distracting.”

Arthur gives him another half smile and raises his glass to his mouth. This time he does take a proper sip. Perhaps he really did have a meeting in the morning.

“Business successfully completed ?”

“Successfully begun.”

Eames is mildly curious, but Arthur doesn’t seem inclined to elaborate — and business is hardly the most interesting thing about him.

“So you’ll be in town a while?” He couldn’t be more blatant than that.

“Quite a while.” Neither could Arthur. “In fact,” he says, finishing his drink, “would you like to show me your favourite parts? Of the city?”

Eames is startled by so obvious a declaration.

“You’ve never been here before?” _Is he a tedious provincial who’s never left the States?_

“Of course I have. But I’ve never seen your favourite parts.”

“Now?”

To Eames’ immense relief, he stands. “Yes. You’re done here, aren’t you? It’s early, and I’m busy tomorrow.”

“It would be my pleasure.” Eames sets his still-full glass down and stands too. Arthur walks ahead of him as they leave, his back straight, shoulders less wide than Eames’, but strong and square. He is wearing a dark charcoal suit tonight, a far better choice than the brown of the first time. His tie, a dark red with a pattern of small dots, is still firmly knotted, despite the hour. A neat man. _What would it take to be allowed past the defence of that knot?_

Arthur stops on the pavement outside the club. “Where will you take me, I wonder?” he asks.

Eames could take him to his beloved Circus of lights, but he isn’t sure the point would be clear, that Arthur would see what he does. He wasn’t there when it was dark, before. He can have whatever light he wants, whenever he wants. And Eames doesn’t want to be among crowds — difficult in this always busy city, but there are places that are quieter. They could walk there, but they would be pushing through crowds before they could get to where he wants to go.

A cab would be better. If Arthur will hail one. An awkward moment, but there’s nothing for it. “It’s a little far. And there are so many people about. Will you hail a cab?”

Arthur gives him a searching look, but doesn’t say anything, simply steps to the kerb and raises an arm to stop a taxi. He opens the door and gestures Eames in, which is what he needed. If the driver shivers he will think it’s only the cold air of their entry.

If Arthur notices anything in the enclosed space he doesn’t betray it. He looks at Eames, who leans forward and turns his face slightly to the side, so the driver doesn’t feel a chill against the back of his neck, can’t not-glimpse him in the mirror. “Chelsea Embankment,” he says, and sits back. Arthur is a body width away and the taxi is full of the cigarette smoke that clung to the last fare’s clothes, and of the garlic of the driver’s dinner, but Eames can still smell Arthur: suit wool, hair pomade, the top note of his cologne and the darker, dirtier base note. He refreshed it before he came out and it has begun to bloom on his warm skin. Such an awareness of scent can be inconvenient, revolting — but sometimes it is intoxicating.

They don’t speak as the driver negotiates the mid-evening traffic, and when he pulls up at their destination, Arthur pays and gets out, looking around at the trees and the ornate street lamps stretched out like a string of pearls.

“Pretty,” he says as Eames joins him on the wide pavement.

Eames hums his agreement. It is pretty. He has always liked it here: the gardens, the trees, the lights, and on the other side of the path, the wall and then the water, doubling the city’s lights, the buildings’ white and gold windows, the red beacons atop the thicket of construction cranes.

If Arthur expected to be taken to a different sort of place he doesn’t say, so Eames offers: “I like the lights, reflected in the water.” Like streaks of blood washed down a drain, he doesn’t add.

“I’ve never strolled beside the Thames at night. Prettier than during the day. Not that it’s ugly during the day,” he adds.

Eames doesn’t have any recent experience of the Thames in daylight, so he doesn’t say anything. He is struck by Arthur’s repeated use of the word “pretty”; an odd choice, not one many men would use.

“Shall we?” he says, gesturing up the path, away from the crowds streaming back across the bridge from the South Bank’s theatres and restaurants, to catch their trains, or continue their evening’s entertainment elsewhere.

Arthur nods and they fall into step. The tide is out, the odour of freshly exposed mud joins exhaust and cut grass and Arthur teasing at Eames’ over-sensitive nose.

“Clears your head,” says Arthur, suddenly, and seeing the look Eames glances sideways at him, adds: “Strolling. Getting out.”

“Tough meeting?” Eames asks, because it seems Arthur does want to tell. 

“Difficult client, distracted boss, lots of details to manage.” He shakes his head. “Tedious.”

“Ah.”

“Project management. I’m very good at it, but sometimes I wonder if …” He trails off, and Eames waits to see what he might add. “If I settled too soon, let go of my dreams.” He gives an odd, embarrassed half-laugh. “Dreams,” he says, placing the word in self-deprecating quotes and shaking his head again. “Who thinks about their life in terms of dreams?”

“Why not?”

“What do you want to be when you grow up? It’s okay when you’re in grade school. And most people end up doing jobs that are hardly the stuff of dreams. Like project management.”

He has to agree, whatever project Arthur might be managing. Eames is certainly not living any life he dreamed of, so long ago when he was a child.

As if reading his thoughts, Arthur asks: “And you? Is what you do what you dreamed of?” 

If Arthur’s laugh was embarrassed, Eames’ is bitter. “Hardly.”

“Oh?” Arthur looks at him, the streetlights’ globes reflected in his almost-black eyes. “What do you do, then?”

Eames says something very reckless. Very true, but very reckless. “I’m a thief.”

For a long moment, Arthur’s expression doesn’t change. Then the corner of his mouth lifts, a quarter-smile. “Plenty of good thieves,” he says, and turns to look out at the river.

The tide has turned and the water running back upstream makes splashing sounds against the river walls, little waves covering the mud that sometimes gives up treasures, or long-drowned secrets.

They walk on in silence.

Arthur is the most terrifying person Eames has ever met. Eames must never see him again.


	4. Divide

Eames is weak.

Weak with need. Weak with desire.

He has not left his basement for many nights. Too many nights of wakeful warring with himself, watched by Arthur — dangerous dangerous dangerous Arthur with his eyes almost the colour of night and his hair like a nightflyer’s wing. Too many thirsty nights, pushing himself closer to the brink than he has ever dared before. Too many nights, and the daylights between them, when the unseen sun tips him into unconsciousness more like a little death than the remembered sleep full of dreams. Not the kind of dreams that Arthur had spoken of. Not those waking dreams of imagination and wanting, but the other dreams, that steal into a sleeping mind, unbidden, roiling with desires and fears too terrible to be acknowledged by the waking mind.

The kind of dreams that would be full of Arthur, if he could still dream them.

But the kind of dreams Arthur spoke of, those dreams fill the night hours as they have not for endless decades. No point to that sort of dream, if nothing he could want would ever be available to him.

And in his weakness, those dreams _are_ full Arthur. Not the static Arthur watching from his walls, but the moving, breathing, living Arthur whose scent teased Eames even before he saw him, whose hand lay on the backseat of a taxicab near enough to touch, whose almost-black eyes reflected the string-of-pearls lights as he looked at Eames for a long moment before his maddening mouth curled as he said: “Plenty of good thieves.”

How can he say that, if he is not one himself? Project management? Managing a gang of thieves? Is that what he means, with his enigmatic half-smiles and lack of specificity? Eames can hardly fault him for that, for keeping back the telling details of his life from someone who caught his eye while counting cards. 

An amoral, reckless man then. Exactly as terrifying as Eames knew he was, standing on the embankment under the summer trees, looking out at the light-streaked river. But a thrilling challenge, maybe enough to still thoughts of testing a knifeblade of sunlight, of pressing a finger to that blade, of letting it slash across an arm, of the pain that would bloom in its wake …

He lies in his lair through another day, resisting unconsciousness so he can keep watching Arthur in his mind — his nightwing hair, his glittering midnight eyes, his dangerous smile. 

Tonight, though, he must go out. His blood-hunger can no longer be denied.

He makes himself be careful, follow his most important rule: no force, steal only from those who ask to be stolen from. But he cannot wait as late as he should, until the prey is pliant with drink and practically begging to be allowed to give him what they think he wants. So he breaks another rule and selects an older, lonelier victim. Normally he hunts the young, those with a long beautiful future that will erase the hazy memory of Eames, not the desperate, resigned to giving without receiving, not the unhappy, the ones more like himself, facing a future of numbing sameness. And he has to take more than he should, leaving the man slumped and grey-faced instead of blissed-out.

He skulks back to his lair and rips Arthur down from the walls, self-loathing churning his mind, making clear thought impossible. He cannot be watched by those inscrutable eyes, the lines crinkling their corners a mocking promise of laughter he will never hear. 

He tears them to pieces, until all those Arthurs are no more than a blizzard of scraps, an eye looking up from one as they fall to the floor.

An eye still looking up at him when he wakes from dreamless unconsciousness. He should get rid of the mess. He doesn’t.

Self-loathing becomes recklessness and he goes out into the night again, drawn like a moth to a light back to the casino.

Arthur is not at the bar. Why would he be? Eames slides into an open space at a card table, but it’s useless, he is useless. He cashes out and is about to leave when he sees a dark head, nightwing hair combed too severely, and is forced to stop and watch as the pair of dice are flicked by a hand that emerges from a sharp black jacket sleeve. Remains to watch as that hand picks up the pile of chips won by the hazard, and when that same hand palms one of the dice and slips it into his pocket, far too subtly to be noticed by anyone at the table or watching on a monitor in a back room. Remains rooted to the spot as Arthur heads for the bar and locks eyes with Eames, his mouth curving into a quarter-smile, his head tilt throwing out an invitation. Eames is weak. He cannot resist.

But it’s a safe night, isn’t it?

He won’t be tempted to take. He won’t be tempted to start something he is not sure he could stop. Will he?

He slips onto the stool next to Arthur and accepts the tumbler slid across the bar, wetting his lips with the amber liquid. Not Laphroaig. He turns to Arthur, eyebrow raised. "Something different."

"Wouldn't want you to get bored," Arthur says, one of those hard-to-judge expressions in his eyes. Is it just flirtation, or does he realise how close to the truth he is?

The whisky has the unmistakable salt tang of an island malt. Still Islay then. “Caol Ila?”

Arthur’s mouth tilts up. “But let's not be whisky bores,” he says, his smile broadening almost to full.

Eames feels just a bit chastised. He inclines his head. “Let’s not,” he agrees, and wets his lips again. “Smooth move with the die,” he says, voice pitched too low for anyone else to hear. 

Arthur’s steady gaze reveals no embarrassment. “I thought you’d notice,” he says. “Got to keep what’s mine.”

A loaded die.

“Good thing you didn’t play long. Bit unfair on the house, both of us.”

That startles a laugh out of Eames. First genuine laugh in a long time. He should stand up, thank Arthur for the drink, walk out and not look back. Ever.

He does not.

“Project manager. Gambler. I’m sure you have other talents?” It’s a clumsy bid for more information than he himself would be willing to give.

“It’s not gambling the way we do it, is it?” Arthur’s voice is still quiet, but now his eyes are crinkling the way the lines around him told Eames they would. “I prefer to have things under control.” He holds Eames’ eyes, and — very deliberately — licks his top lip.

Eames closes his eyes, which is a stupid giveaway he really can’t control. He wets his lips with the Scotch again, wishing he could let its clean heat slide down his throat; imagining what he _can_ drink. 

He is in deep deep trouble. So deep, he can almost taste the salt of the waves breaking over his head.

“I find the world is divided into those of us who want to be in control and those …” he smiles again “... who want to be controlled.”

Eames has always been the former. He isn’t so sure of that anymore.

He is sure this room is too light, too loud. He would rather be under the trees by the river, in the dark. Where he would feel less exposed.

“I liked that river walk,” says Arthur.

It could be random. Or he can read Eames’ thoughts.

“But we didn’t walk far last time. Shall we go?” He sets his glass down. He has drunk very little. He’s in control of himself. Eames has of course drunk nothing at all. He feels very far from in control of himself.

This time, Eames suggests they walk, uneasy about being in an enclosed space with Arthur. At last they’re free of the crowds that always clog the pavements in this part of the city, even late at night. It’s quieter under the trees, under the gorgeous string-of-pearls lights. The tide is in tonight, the water whispering along the stone wall that holds the river in check. They walk in silence. Eames can’t imagine what Arthur is thinking. The Arthur who revealed himself tonight is quite a bit more difficult to understand than the man he met the first night, more confusing even than the man who took Eames’ description of himself as a thief in stride. A challenge Eames should walk away from, rather than walk alongside. He steals a glance at him. Against the backdrop of the light-streaked water, Arthur is beautiful. Of course Eames won’t walk away from him. He turns his face aside, before Arthur can catch him looking, afraid he might say something he would come to regret, make some declaration, blurt out: “You terrify me.”

The first time they walked here, Arthur terrified him with what Eames thought was merely the dangerous allure of his recklessness. Now he knows Arthur is not reckless. At all. And that is far more alluring. And far far more dangerous.

Up ahead is the rank of benches decorated with cast-iron Sphinx-heads. “Shall we sit?” says Arthur. It’s not a question. He doesn’t look at Eames, gazing calmly out over the river as he says: “I would like to see you again.”

Eames is about to do something he has known for days he should not. Something he should be even more certain, after tonight, he should not.

Arthur glances sideways at him. “Taking money off that club while waiting for you to turn up is … mildly entertaining, but a waste of my time. However, the nature of my work makes it difficult …” he frowns, irritated “... to make firm plans. I would give you a few hours’ notice, if you gave me your number.”

“I don’t have a phone.”

“What?”

“I don’t have a phone.”

Arthur is looking straight at him now. “Why?”

“Don’t like them. I’ve never needed one.” Until now, perhaps.

Arthur frowns again. “Perhaps you do, now,” he says. It’s unnerving the way he seems to hear Eames’ thoughts. 

Eames hums, non-committal, trying to regain some control.

“Alright. I will meet you at the club again … night after next, 10pm.” He stands. “It’s late. I have to go.”

Eames stands too. “Until the night after next,” he agrees, and watches as Arthur walks away, heading for the street where he can get a cab.

He sits down again, his hand on the head of a Sphinx. A creature less enigmatic than the one walking away.


	5. Doom days

He doesn’t do anything while waiting for his rendezvous with Arthur, just waits, suspended. The grey ennui has been replaced by a sick tension — the tension of knowing he's about to do something he will regret, while simultaneously knowing he will regret it if he does not; the tension too of knowing he is not in control, of standing at the edge of a cliff, waiting to be told he must step off. 

He thinks about making another picture. He’d add red ink bleeding down the page, the lights reflected in the river behind beautiful Arthur, his expression unreadable. 

In the end, he doesn’t do anything. No, he does one thing. He throws out the Arthur confetti, the shreds of Arthur, the Arthur eye that's been staring up at him. When all the bits of the ersatz Arthurs are banished he lies down and closes his eyes and watches Arthur walk behind his lids, wearing the black suit that made his eyes just a little less nightshaded. He'd been wearing a tie of purple and black shot silk. The colour of poison.

When it is finally almost time to go and meet Arthur, Eames dresses with care, again in clothes from when he was himself, clothes from before. Will Arthur understand? He won’t understand completely, he won’t know that these are clothes Eames himself has owned for decades. If he has as much interest in clothes as it seems he does, he might guess at some of Eames’ intent, though. And even if he does not, these garments armour Eames.

Arthur is not at the bar when Eames gets to the club, a few minutes early. Arthur is the kind of man who won’t take kindly to being made to wait; he very nearly said as much. Eames scans the tables, but he’s not dicing either. He is about to order a drink, wondering what other Scotch Arthur might like, and then checking himself: will that seem like showing off, trying too hard? Will he be deemed a whisky bore?

This entire assignation is completely misjudged and he should leave while he can, walk away and never come here again. Arthur might be mildly disappointed, but he’d get over it. And go on with his life of managing whatever mysterious projects he’s in charge of. _And go on with his life._

Because Eames is certain he would not be able to taste Arthur once and walk away. And he fears that he might not be able to stop himself from going too far, taking once, twice, thrice … too many times. Something he has not done for decades, since the first years, since before he experimented and brought himself to a place where he can live with himself. And isn’t that a bitter joke.

He is in the lobby, about to step back out into the street, away from Arthur’s terrible, dangerous allure, when Arthur comes in. 

“Eames?” He doesn’t sound surprised so much as mildly disappointed, not for himself, but because Eames has not done as he was told. It’s a powerful drug, the urge to cede control to someone else, the relief of having control assumed by someone else, after all these long long years of being always in control of those from whom he takes. 

“I was early,” Eames says, feeling a need to explain.

“And …?”

_I was leaving, to save you from me._

“I was stepping out to meet you. Perhaps you don’t … we could go—”

“Somewhere else?”

 _Invite me back to your hotel._

“If you’d like. Perhaps somewhere a bit more—”

“Intimate?”

He holds Arthur’s gaze. He’s ceding too much control. He runs his tongue across his top lip (Arthur’s not the only one who can play that game).

“Yes. That would be best.”

Arthur’s eyes widen. Perhaps they both need to cede some of the control they always have to maintain with others. This dance just became a lot more complex. A lot more challenging. Far far more interesting even than it had seemed by the river. Eames doesn’t grin (and give himself away?) but his every fibre thrums with the thrill of this chase and be chased.

“The bar in my hotel …”

“Also stocks some fine single malts?”

Arthur frowns. “Is quiet.”

Arthur has read his mind again, it seems. He is so much alone that the press and clamour of too many people begins to be an oppression he is less and less able to tolerate. And yet, he needs it, to escape his thoughts. And stalk his … victims. _Be honest with yourself, at the very least._

He holds the door for Arthur, and hopes he remembers he must hail the cab, if they need one. 

He does. He opens the door for Eames, ushering him in and climbing in after him. He gives the driver the name of a hotel Eames doesn’t know and sits back, looking sideways at him. The small space is filled with the scent of him, that he would know anywhere. An old-fashioned scent — hair pomade and suit-wool, his cologne faded almost to nothingness, a wisp. He has come straight from whatever it is he does, no time to bathe, change his clothes. Underneath all the scents is sweat: tired, male, human. He wants to bury his nose in Arthur’s neck, drink in all his aromas, wallow in them, feel his pulsebeat, steady, or perhaps not. Steady and then ratcheting quicker, tripping, hotter and hotter. Eames can almost feel the flutter of it under his mouth, can almost taste the heat of it. He bites down on his lip lest a sound betray him. Soon. He can be patient, a little while. 

He doubts that, however quiet the bar, Arthur will consent to tilt his head, bare his neck to Eames in it. But he also doubts he will have to exercise his more … specialised charms on him. Arthur wants to take from Eames, and to give, even if he doesn’t know exactly what Eames will take. 

The cab stops, Arthur leans forward to pay. Eames remains in his seat, waiting to see whether Arthur will open his door. It would be a gesture of subtle dominance. He doesn't need to wait long, Arthur steps round the car and opens the door, his eyes locking with Eames'. It is intoxicating, performing this dance with a partner who understands. Eames nods and gets out. Arthur places a hand at the small of his back and guides him as they climb the steps of what was surely once a rich man's townhouse. Before, when Eames walked these streets a very different man. A man, at least. 

He shivers under Arthur's hand. He can't fail to notice. He hopes Arthur understands. He does, of course he does. Why would he do this, if he did not?

"Thank you," he says, as Arthur pulls open the door, holds it for Eames. 

The bar is in what could have been a gentleman’s library, and is decorated to resemble one now, a group of bottles on a sideboard. They're the only ones here, no staff. Not even the butler who would be standing by, if this house was still really what it is pretending to be. Arthur pours Scotch into two glasses. Tallisker this time. He hands one to Eames and bends to write in a ledger. "Honesty system," he says.

"And me a thief," says Eames, his mouth starting to form a smile.

Arthur gives him an assessing look over the rim of his glass. "But you're not that kind of thief, are you?" he says. Eames just smiles, acknowledging what Arthur has guessed. 

They sit in armchairs drawn up to the fireplace, empty this summer evening. The room is lit by low lamps, the leather of the furniture and books gleaming. It’s a convincing facsimile of a time before, a time when the likes of Eames as he was would not have been welcomed in.

Arthur leans back, and closes his eyes.

"Long day?"

"Thought it would never end."

Eames makes a quiet interrogative noise.

"Difficult client. Many annoyances. Details to get right, colleagues who don't get them right." He opens his eyes, tips the corner of his mouth in one of his quarter-smiles.

"I prefer to work alone," says Eames.

"Wish I could, but … team sport, you might say."

"Hmm, although your actual sport is running." He lets his eyes slide deliberately down Arthur's lean body. "Solitary pursuit of excellence."

“It is, now."

"Now?"

"Chess, before."

"Popular, were you?"

Arthur smiles, a full smile that reveals dimples he no doubt keeps strictly in check. 

"You prefer a different kind of gaming strategy now."

"It takes less time. And I like the rewards." Arthur sits forward and drains his glass. "We could sit here and talk in riddles, or we could go upstairs." His dark eyes and the firm line of his mouth hold a challenge.

"And be honest?"

"And reveal more, at least.”

Eames has to bite his lip, to restrain the grin that would reveal too much, too soon. He stands, holds out a hand to Arthur, as if he could possibly need it. Arthur ignores it, but he doesn’t seem to mind the gesture. His hand returns to the small of Eames' back as they leave the library and begin to climb the stairs.

Eames wonders if Arthur is this proprietorial with all his … some would say hook-ups; Eames wouldn’t and he doesn’t think Arthur would. He has no idea what Arthur has in mind between them: one night, or the start of something? Whatever he thinks they're doing, tonight is all Eames is likely to get, and even that is a mistake. A mistake that was made the moment he set foot back in the casino after the night they first met. Every meeting since then has been another step on a pathway to pain, to eventual destruction. He's the one who knows enough to fear; he's the one on whom all blame will rest. And yet here they are, Arthur's possessive hand guiding Eames upstairs. Can he feel the tension thrumming through him? Sense the sickening, delicious anticipation?

They're at the head of the staircase now (no lift where he would have been tempted to crowd Arthur into a corner, tilt his chin just so and drop his thirsty mouth to the hot pulse beating under the thin skin). Eames swallows the need pooling behind his teeth, runs his tongue across their sharp edges, and allows himself to be steered down the hallway. Arthur drops his hand from Eames' back and takes out the room key, unlocks the door, opens it and steps inside. Eames waits on the threshold until Arthur glances over his shoulder, a crease between his brows. A long moment stretches between them, until Arthur says: "Come in, Eames." A hint of command in his tone.

But still Eames hesitates. "Are you sure you should be inviting me into your room?"

Arthur laughs. "I didn't bring you up here just to send you away again. Please come in, Eames."

He should walk away. Should say, I'm sorry, this is a mistake, and walk away. Arthur will think he is a coward, which he knows others of his kind would also think. Only he knows what it would take— how his mind is warring with his base desire, his need, screaming inside him: _Take it, take him, you want this this, you need this, this is your right._

His need drowns out the quieter voice of reason and he steps into the room. The easy mood they managed in the library is gone, drowned by the tension. Arthur takes off his jacket, hangs it on the back of the chair by the desk under the window, tugs the knot of his tie down, and flicks open his collar button. Eames swallows the noise that forms in his throat and takes a step and then another towards Arthur until Arthur takes a step backwards, and another until he can’t go any further, backed against the desk. He braces his hands on the smooth wood and looks up at Eames. Not the position Eames thought he would adopt, when he played this scene in his mind, anticipating. But Arthur isn’t submitting. There’s challenge in his nightdark eyes, as if he’s daring Eames to take, daring him to see how far Arthur is willing to go, what he is willing to give. 

Eames steps up even closer, closer than he usually dares, pressing his bulk against Arthur, holding him in place. Arthur’s eyes widen and he tilts his chin up. Eames slips his fingers to the back of Arthur’s neck, and presses his thumb lightly into the space revealed by Arthur’s undone tie. Moves it to his pulse: steady, but faster than a fit man’s resting rate. Arthur’s tongue darts out, licking along his top lip.

It is so long since Eames has kissed someone, just kissed and not taken, just kissed and not terrified. Much as he needs to taste Arthur’s hot blood, he wants to taste Arthur’s mouth. Wants to be kissed.

Placing his cold fingers on Arthur’s skin has warned him. Eames drops his hand and steps back a tiny amount, so he’s no longer trapping him. If he wants to stop, he can. Eames’ whole being will roar with frustration, but he will let him go. 

But Arthur leans forward, following, and pushes a hand into Eames’ hair, pulling on it to tip Eames’ head back. It’s not real pain, but the hold on his hair is enough to tell Eames: You don’t scare me, I’m a match for you.

Eames can’t stop the smile that curls his mouth, and Arthur grins down at him. _We understand each other._

And then Arthur folds his grin away, deliberate, and leans closer and places his warm mouth on Eames’ cold lips and doesn’t flinch — presses forward, seeking admission, and Eames opens his mouth and invites Arthur in and the taste of him! Whisky and aliveness and human heat! Eames could drown in this, could surrender all and live in this forever. But will Arthur allow Eames in, allow his cold undeadness to invade his living warmth? Eames is afraid to try, afraid he will lose this, afraid Arthur will withdraw, will push Eames away with a look of revulsion and deny him this. So he allows himself to be kissed, to be dominated, until finally Arthur pulls back and leans against the desk again. Eames can’t meet his eyes, afraid of what he will see in them. He steps back, putting space between them, relinquishing Arthur’s heat. Everything he thought he would do, imagined he would take, every intention has been washed away by this taste of Arthur.

“That was …” 

_Baffling? Revolting? Exciting?_

“... not what I expected.”

 _Really?_ Eames warned him with the touch of his cold fingers.

“I should go,” he says, stepping away, turning for the door. “Goodbye, Arthur.”

“Go?”

His helpless desire is screaming at him: _Take! Take! You won’t get another chance. Take before you go. You want him! You want him more than you have wanted for so long, so long … Turn around, shove him backwards, tip his head back, bare his throat and take his hot hot blood. Take!_

He can’t stay here, so close, close enough to smell Arthur’s aliveness, his mouth still full of the taste of him, and hope to ignore that screaming.

“Yes,” he says, voice toneless. “I have to go. I should not have come. Goodbye, Arthur.”

He opens the door and almost runs along the hallway, down the stairs and out of the door.

He walks and walks and keeps walking. Away from Arthur, away from what he thought he could have. _How could I have thought that? My kind do not receive, we take. We are not given what we desire, we snatch what we must have and move on without looking back and we wait as long as we can bear, and then we find another victim and take again. I am doomed to keep taking, doomed never to be given anything. Ever._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Don't worry, the next part is written and will be posted next Friday.
> 
> Come and tell me you thought, I'd love to hear.


	6. Nocturnal creatures

It is midnight. Only midnight, when he steps into his beloved Circus of lights. He should be creeping back to his basement, to hide in the dark and try not to think about Arthur. Try not to give in to the voice that is still screaming at him to turn around, go back, knock on Arthur’s door and take what he wants. Once wouldn’t hurt, Arthur would hardly notice, in the morning. Eames would be careful to place his mark where a collar and tie would conceal it. Arthur would be a bit fuzzy-headed, nothing a few espressos wouldn’t cure. 

Once wouldn’t hurt and Arthur might even enjoy it. Something to relieve the tedium of a difficult job with disappointing colleagues. Arthur would not talk, wouldn’t be tempted to turn Eames into a story, he doesn’t think. Arthur keeps his secrets close. Eames doubts anyone who hasn’t been allowed to experience it would guess his command and control in more intimate settings. Or his gambling with a loaded die. To those annoying colleagues, he probably seems like a rule-stickler, a details man, a bit conventional, dull even. That is after all what Eames mostly thought, until Arthur revealed himself with a few surprising words, a claiming touch.

He shivers at the memory of that claiming touch — subtle, but authoritative. The thrill of dancing with someone who knew the steps, who could push back.

_So why did I run?_

Why not stay, when Arthur did not push him away, even when he must have realised Eames was not like other men? Why not stay, and push back against him, and drop his mouth to that strong, quick pulsebeat and take what he wanted, what he needed?

_It was the kiss._

If he hadn’t given in to that desire, hadn’t been weak enough to indulge himself, hadn’t tasted Arthur’s mouth instead of his blood, he would have been able to satisfy his hunger.

_It was not just the kiss._

It was the repeated meetings, the walks under the string-of-pearls lights by the river, the whiskies, their hot tang awakening memories long buried, the cab rides, with Arthur’s pomade-wool-cologne-sweat scent almost making him swoon. It was the drawings looking down at him from his walls. It was Arthur’s tired confession in the fake library, it was climbing the stairs with Arthur’s hand on him, it was Arthur saying at the door to his room: “Come in, Eames”. It was Arthur, pushing forward, even after Eames’ chill touch, Arthur, demanding access, taking it, not pulling back revolted. 

It was everything between them that stopped him taking. And now he will never have anything from the first person he has desired — instead of just needing to take from — since he was a man.

The lights of the Circus are dull. He doesn’t even glance up at them now he’s under them, but turns his steps away.

How they would laugh, the others of his kind, at the way he has allowed sentiment, the touch of a human mouth, to rob him of his right.

How he abhors everything about his existence, about his not-life as a nocturnal creature.

As he walks, he sees them, the other nocturnal creatures, as he often does not; really looks at them, in their doorways, walled about with their paltry possessions, their thin shoulders under dirty clothes. He’s got a basement to sleep in, clean clothes and plenty of things, but does he really have any more freedom than they do? Of course not. A dog curled next to one man growls as he passes, baring its teeth at the unliving smell of him. Animals can always tell, humans hardly ever, until it’s too late.

Finally, he reaches his own door. It’s nowhere near sunrise, he doesn’t have to go in, but can’t drag himself another step. He unlocks the door, steps over his own threshold and collapses, waits for unconsciousness to take him and blot out his self-recriminations.

When he awakes as darkness falls outside again, Arthur fills his inner eye. The look on Arthur’s face as Eames pulled back from his mouth. Puzzled, questioning, but not horrified.

“That was not what I expected.”

It wasn’t what Eames expected either. He expected to be able to take. He expected to like it more than he usually does. He expected to have to discipline himself to take only the barest minimum. 

He did not expect to be frozen with revulsion at himself. He did not expect to leave without a smear of blood on his mouth.

He hoped to be allowed another meeting, a chance to risk taking another sip, never enough to harm, not enough to put Arthur in danger, not enough to make Arthur want him, just enough for himself. 

And then Arthur would leave London. His mysterious job would end and he would leave and Eames would be left with memories: with the remembered taste of his blood and the remembered scent of him and the remembered touch of his hand.

And perhaps those memories would be enough.

But he is left with the bitter taste of regret, the fetid reek of failure, the itch of no-touch.

He tries to close his eyes, to slip back into unconsciousness, to ignore the Arthur who walks behind his closed lids, through his daydream-nightmare, but he is unignorable. 

His nightshade eyes as he allowed Eames to guess things about himself he had not revealed, his darkwing hair, less strictly disciplined than usual, at the end of his long, frustrating day. 

His hand in Eames’ hair, tugging, a delicious almost-pain, the memory of which pulls a grunt from him as he lies watching the whole of last night play out. The way Arthur tilted Eames’ head back — how could he have known that was what Eames would have done to him; that he would have tilted his chin up and put his mouth on the hot pulse in his throat and sunk his sharp teeth into thin skin and taken?

His warm lips against Eames’ cold mouth; the way he demanded access, his hot tongue pushing in and claiming. How the taste of him overwhelmed Eames and made him forget himself and surrender his need. 

And now that he can’t have Arthur, is he doomed always to see him in his mind? Never to have any peace from him? 

He has to go out, sate his need with anyone else, try to scrub Arthur from his memory. 

He dresses to seem younger than his face (and isn’t that a sick joke) and goes to a dark club where the music is too loud for conversation, grinds up against a boy, a girl, demands with a flick of his eyes, cold fingers locked around a wrist, a shove against an alley wall, a tug on hair to tilt a head, a throat bared, and he takes and takes what is his by right, what is his by need, and leaves them slumped. When they come to, they’ll think they had too much to drink, blame the drug, scratch at the mark and wind a scarf to cover it. Tell the tale, with a laugh, deprecating their stupidity, or keep it secret, masked by shame.

He walks away with red on his mouth, like the smear of tail-lights on wet tarmac, like the streak of crane-lights on the river’s heaving surface. He walks away, back to his lair, to unconsciousness and dreamlessness and forgetting.

But there is no forgetting.

He makes another ersatz Arthur, and another and another. Arthur in the leather armchair, eyes closed, hair slipping from its severity. Arthur at the door to his hotel room, looking over his shoulder, telling Eames to come in. Arthur after the kiss, his mouth slick, not understanding why Eames pulled away and turned and left. He doesn’t draw beautiful Arthur by the river, red ink spilling down the page. Recalling that Arthur, the Arthur who told him his company was desired, who instructed Eames to come to him, is too painful. 

So another night ends and another daylight passes and still Arthur won’t leave him alone. He has known from the very beginning that Arthur is a bad decision in the flesh, that everything about the way he has bewitched Eames can lead only to destruction. Of Arthur. Of Eames. Because if he destroys Arthur through his own insatiable appetite, there will be nothing holding him back from the fatal blade of sunlight knifing through a crack in the blinds, through an opened door. He will test that blade, will welcome the pain of it. Will punish himself against its deadly edge.

He spends the hours of this night staring at the Arthurs on his wall, their poor replicas calling to mind fresh details. 

The mauve smudge of his tired eyelids in the dim library. Eames longs to know more about this job of Arthur’s, to listen to him talk, laying all his frustrations bare. That’s another thing to miss, among all the other things: listening, actually caring about the troubles of your companion, knowing them well enough to be interested, being the one trusted with their thoughts.

The dangerous fire in his nearly-black eyes as he turned at the doorway: “Come in, Eames”. To give up control, to be commanded, instead of always commanding, always making others do as he says, or merely suggests. Another secret he is tired of carrying: the relief it would be to simply do as he is told, for once.

The shine on his mouth after he kissed Eames. Did he taste Eames’ secrets there? Taste that he had secrets, even if he didn’t discover their exact nature from one kiss? Because that’s yet another thing to miss: being able to tell some of your secrets; to set down the burden of never telling.

All he has done, with these Arthurs looking down at him, is make the agony of his existence even sharper than it has always been.

And so another night passes and unconsciousness overtakes him again, blank and dreamless.

But waking always follows, and Arthur still torments him. So he does what he has known, under all his denials and self-delusions, he would inevitably do. He goes back out, vowing he will only look. He will stay in the shadows and take only with his eyes, gathering more images for nightmare-daydreams. 

It is raining and walkers hurry under umbrellas, or huddled into their hooded coats, no soft summer night to wait and watch in, hoping for a glimpse of Arthur, coming back to the hotel, or framed in his window’s golden square, pulling off his tie, unbuttoning his shirt, looking out into the dark. Thinking of Eames? Unlikely. 

Standing hidden in a doorway, like one of the other nocturnal creatures, Eames waits. 

Arthur's probably left the city — finished his mysterious, tedious, tricky job and gone away, back to his unknown American life. 

He's forgotten Eames, or he will think of him only fleetingly, as a secretive man who liked walking by the river and was frightened off by a demanding kiss, an old-fashioned man who liked the taste of a fine single malt, but didn't drink it, a card-counting thief who recklessly gave away that secret at least. 

He won't think wistfully of him as a man whose secrets seemed worth plumbing, who could be claimed with a discreet hand, who wanted to listen, and who liked to be commanded.

Or will he remember the unliving chill of his hand, the way he allowed Arthur in, but didn't seek access for himself? Even if he remembers that, he won't guess the truth.

Because that is what protects Eames' kind. No one believes they walk among the living. No one, waking and finding that particular mark upon their skin, thinks they have been stolen from in the most intimate way. They can't think that, because they barely remember the man they met in the dark and followed where they should not have and surrendered to. They don't ever understand what has been done to them. It's the one real skill, the true dark magic of his kind: they fade from the mind as soon as they have walked away.

Even though he did not dazzle Arthur and rob him of a bit of his life, he is probably fading from his recall. 

But his wait is not so long. Arthur gets out of a taxi and hurries bareheaded across the pavement to the steps of the hotel. He doesn’t look around and catch sight of Eames watching. He wouldn't see him through the curtain of falling rain anyway. He doesn’t appear in the window of his room, but Eames is patient, isn’t he? 

No, he isn’t. 

He steps out from the sheltering doorway and crosses the road, so like a river with lights reflecting in its glittering surface. He climbs the steps and crosses the threshold. The concierge glances up, but says nothing, neither a greeting nor a denial of entry; Eames can make people’s eyes slide off him, not quite seeing. If Arthur hasn’t gone up to his room, he will be in the library, a Scotch in his hand. If he is tired, with head tipped back and eyes closed, will he even notice Eames enter? Perhaps he will be able to stand in the doorway and simply look, and leave, satisfied. But he is not so self-deluded as to actually believe that. He doesn’t know what he will do after he has seen Arthur.

He walks towards the library — not many steps, but slow ones — and stops at the open door. A man and a woman are seated in the armchairs by the fire, lit on this chill evening. Arthur is in the far corner of the room, apparently absorbed in studying the bookshelves. His shoulders are straight, a few drops of rain beaded on his suit, the damp bringing the wool to the top of the Arthur-scent Eames is aware of even at this distance. He may be able to stand there unseen, looking only at the way Arthur’s hair comes to a point at his nape — imagining tracing that point with the tip of one finger, how Arthur might shiver at the touch. He almost makes a sound at the thought of that shiver. He doesn’t, but Arthur turns and sees him. His dark eyes narrow and he walks across the room, setting his still full glass on the sideboard as he passes it.

“Eames,” he says, low, even, unsurprised, and takes his elbow, steers him towards the stairs and up, hand once again laid possessively on him. It is Eames who shivers. He doesn’t utter a word. Whatever he thought he would do, or say, vanishes.

At the door of his room, Arthur digs for his key, unlocks it and steps inside. “Come in, Eames,” he says. He walks to the desk, taking off his jacket, tugging his tie loose, and turns to face Eames. “I wondered if I would see you again.”

“I tried not to come. I should not have.”

“And yet, here you are.” His mouth lifts in that quarter-smile.

They stand looking at each other. 

Until Arthur says: “Come here, Eames.”

Eames steps towards him. He should regain control, take Arthur’s chin in his hand, push his other hand into his hair, tilt his head, push his collar aside, drop his mouth to his throat and take.

But Arthur catches hold of his wrist and stops his hand as he lifts it. “You ran. Why?”

“To stop myself.”

“From what?”

You never tell them what it is you will take. Telling is next to asking, and you don’t ask, why would they ever agree?

“From taking what I want.”

Arthur doesn’t flinch, his nightshade eyes are steady.

“What makes you think I wouldn’t—?”

“I know.”

Arthur still has his wrist in a loose grip, his fingers tighten. “No Eames, you don’t. Not unless you ask.”

Eames runs his tongue along his sharp teeth. “I want,” he says, forcing the words out, “your blood.”

Arthur laughs, a bark of incredulity. “My blood?”

Eames averts his eyes. “Yes. I need it. Your blood.”

“So that’s what you steal?”

“Yes.”

“I steal dreams.” Arthur’s voice is flat, matter-of-fact.

Eames looks back at him. “Dreams?”

“Yes. We’re not that different, you and I.”

Now Eames laughs, bitter. “Oh, we are,” he says. “You aren’t undead.”

Arthur raises an eyebrow. “True,” he says. “I did realise—”

“That there was something … ‘off’ about me?”

Arthur tugs on his wrist, pulling him closer. Eames stumbles, puts his palm on Arthur’s chest.

Arthur threads his other hand into Eames’ hair, tugging, pulling his head back, and drops his mouth to Eames’. “Cold,” he says, right against Eames’ lips, right before he pushes in.

It's even more overwhelming than the first time, because Arthur knows, and he doesn't care. He doesn't reject him, he hasn't turned away in fear and disgust. Instead, the hand that isn't in Eames' hair grips his shoulder, holding him steady, and then slips down to rest in the small of his back, that claiming gesture, holding him close. 

He hasn't been in another man's arms like this since … before. If he could, he might weep from relief. And also from terror at Arthur's recklessness. 

He forces himself to pull away.

"Do you understand," he says, "what I want? What I need? What I will take from you?"

Arthur draws a shuddering breath. "I think if you meant to do me harm, you'd have done it by the river, the first time. I think you can control your urges."

"Barely."

Arthur gives him a quarter-smile, eyes steady.

"But you are right," he continues. "I have trained myself to take the minimum, to need less. To do the least harm." 

He raises a hand to Arthur's throat, touches his thumb to the pulse beating there, strong and quick, presses down. Arthur doesn't gasp, but he does take a quick breath, and the pulse flutters. His eyes haven't left Eames'. He nods. 

"Say it, Arthur."

"Do you always ask permission?" Arthur's voice trembles minutely.

"No. Never." His voice is not steady either. 

Arthur nods again. "Do it, Eames, take my blood." He tilts his chin up and back, baring his throat. His eyes widen, pupils almost eclipsing nearly black irises. Eames traces his jaw with icy fingers. Arthur doesn't pull away, but a tremor runs through him and he bites his lip.

"Will it—?"

"Hurt? You won't remember it." He presses down with his thumb again on the place where he will put his mouth, where his teeth will break the skin "I honestly don't know. I don't remember. No one does."

Arthur nods again. "Okay," he says. And he closes his eyes.

The pulse under his thumb is fluttering harder now. Eames places his mouth on it. Breathes Arthur in. A top note of fear overlays all the other scents. He soothes his tongue over the pulse. Arthur trembles harder, but he doesn't flinch away. Eames is also trembling, with the effort of restraint. He can't hover here, drowning in Arthur, and hope to control himself. He touches his teeth to Arthur's skin, and bites down quickly.

The hot, animal, living salt of Arthur floods his mouth. It is everything he wished for and it terrifies him. He reels back, a hand pushing against Arthur's shoulder, Arthur's blood slick on his lips. The taste of him! He takes another step back, away from Arthur's heat. But he can't get away from his scent. The odour of fear has dissipated. He opens his eyes. Arthur is leaning against the desk, braced on one hand, the other at his throat, where a trickle of blood stains the white collar of his shirt. Eames didn't wipe it away. Couldn't trust himself to stay close long enough to do it.

Harsh breathing fills the room and he realises it's coming from both of them. Arthur's eyes are hooded as the forgetful languor overtakes him. Eames should leave. He never stays — his restraint only goes so far.

But he asked for Arthur's permission and was given it. He didn't steal. He can't run. 

He needs distance though. He backs further away until he's standing against the door, still staring at Arthur, who gazes back — unfocused, but present. And as Eames watches, he brings his bloodied fingers to his mouth and sucks them. Eames has to look away, chasing the same blood lingering on his lips. Imagining kissing Arthur, kissing the blood out of his mouth. 

He doesn't like who he is, _what_ he is, but he hasn't been truly afraid of losing his restraint since the earliest days, before he disciplined his need. He is afraid now.

Arthur is the most terrifying man he has ever met.

He slides down until he's sitting on the floor. "You should lie down," he says. "I'd help, but—" he has to say it, admit it to Arthur "—I'm afraid of getting close. I never stay, afterwards."

Arthur nods, pushes away from the desk and goes to sit on the bed. He leans down and takes off his shoes. He lies down, back to Eames. 

"Like a needle." His voice is dreamy, slurring.

"A needle?" Arthur seems too precise, too controlled for a drug user.

"Used to needles." His voice fades, he's asleep. 

Eames lets his head fall back against the door and closes his eyes. Breathes Arthur in, listens to his breaths. The enigma has only deepened. The more Arthur reveals, the more secrets there are.

He should leave. 

After a time — Eames couldn't say exactly how long, other than that it is not very close to dawn yet — Arthur speaks again.

"Not drugs," he says, "not like that." He turns over to face Eames. "Dream stealing. We use a drug. We extract secrets. People pay us to steal secrets."

"Why?"

"Commercial espionage. Or what their wife does when they're not there. It's … a dirty job." 

His eyes fall shut again. Eames watches as his face softens in sleep, his mouth relaxing. It's time for him to go. He stands up, dares to approach Arthur. The blood has dried on his neck, the imprint of Eames' crooked teeth fading. He touches a finger to the mark. The chill makes Arthur stir. He opens his nightdark eyes.

"I'm leaving now."

"Come back?"

He _really_ should not.

"I don't know."

Arthur touches his wrist. "Come back." His voice has that note of command. 

Eames straightens and steps back. "Goodbye, Arthur," he says, closing the door.

The night porter doesn't look up as he crosses the lobby and steps out into the pre-dawn dark.


	7. Million pieces

He walks slowly away, Arthur’s command echoing in his head. Come back. Not, please come back. He understands Eames better perhaps than Eames understands himself.

And Arthur’s intriguing secret confessed: I steal dreams. The poetry of the idea, ruined by Arthur’s explanation of the tawdry reality. But still, the desire to know more is another thing that will draw him back. 

As if he needs another excuse. One sip of Arthur has ruined him for others. He is greedy for more — and terrified of taking it. Remaining in the room with him tested every bit of the restraint he has so carefully trained himself to exercise. It was a stupid risk, but he’s glad he took it, because it was remaining that granted him the hazy whispered confessions. And the command.

But touching Arthur as he slept almost broke his resolve, almost lured him to his doom, almost made him lie down with Arthur. He would have kept his distance, kept his chill from disturbing Arthur’s sleep — in the fantasy world in his head he could have done those things. 

Or would Arthur have woken before it was too late, held him off, resisted him? And could he have woken in time and forced himself to leave before sunlight knifed in through the window left uncurtained? 

Everything he thought he knew, everything he has forced and disciplined himself to do for decades, has been upended by Arthur. His existence, shattered. Isn’t that what he yearned for? Something to break through the ennui? 

Be careful what you wish for. It’s an echo from his distant childhood, an injunction not to dream above your lot in life, not to indulge in pointless yearning for what you may not have (and wasn't that a sick joke).

The rain has stopped, but the streets still shine with reflected light. It is later than he realised, and the summer dawn is looming. No time to linger. He quickens his steps, racing the sun, and opens his door just in time. Wouldn’t it be ironic, to feel that knife blade just when he no longer needs it. Arthur will still leave and he will desire it then. But not now.

He stands with his back against the door, only here there is no Arthur to look at, and listen to and breathe in.

He can't drop into unconsciousness now, too full of Arthur, his hot blood, the scent of him, the sound of his voice, the touch of his hands, the taste of his mouth. 

He spends the daylight hours caught up in a reverie of Arthur, his dangerous allure, his secrets, the softness of his mouth in sleep, his command.

The summer days are long, the nights all too short. As soon as it is safe, he steps out to obey the command: Come back. 

This night is warm and still, and again he waits in a doorway; Arthur's room is dark. But soon, earlier than last night, Arthur gets out of a cab. His jacket is off, his shirt sleeves rolled to his elbows, his collar open. Eames bites back the growl that forms in his throat; Arthur glances across the street and sees him waiting. Eames goes to him.

“You came.”

“You told me to.”

Arthur smiles, that tiny lift of his mouth. “Do you always do what you’re told?”

“No, never.”

“You never ask permission, you never follow orders.”

“And yet, here I am.”

Arthur’s smile broadens. “Here we are. Shall we go in?”

“Can we walk? I need to tell you some things, and I can’t think in a small space with you.” Such honesty is almost painful. Eames feels more naked than when he admitted his blood thirst.

The look Arthur gives him is searching.

“Of course. There are things I should tell you, also.”

They are standing outside the pool of light spilling down the hotel’s steps, and Arthur moves off further. Eames falls into step with him; his proximity bearable in the open air, his scent faint. There is a new layer tonight, something chemical. A drug, Arthur said.

They walk in silence until they turn a corner into a quieter street lined with trees.

Eames can’t think of an elegant way to say what he must. “You have shattered me, Arthur.”

Arthur looks sideways at him, but doesn’t answer.

“Everything I knew about myself. Everything I had accepted about my existence. Shattered into a million pieces.” Arthur will surely laugh at the melodrama of this declaration. But he does not.

“Eames,” he says. His fingers brush Eames’ wrist.

“I never see the same person twice. I don’t reveal my secret. I never ask permission. I am the one in control. I take and I walk away. It’s the only safety. For me, and for them. I am unremembered. Unmemorable.”

Arthur makes a quiet noise that could be a laugh.

“But you have shattered all the self-discipline I have crafted over decades. Gone … as soon as … as soon as you saw me counting. As soon as you told me you saw me counting. Of course, I didn’t admit it to myself straight away. But that was the moment. I tried to forget you! I went out, slaked my thirst on others. But I couldn’t stay away. And then I told you a secret, and you were not scared off. You terrified me by the river. I was even more certain I should never try to see you again. And even less able to resist you.”

“Do you think you’re the only one? I knew there was something about you when I touched your hand that first night. I should have been warned off, but I wasn’t. I went back when I should have stayed away, and I have also revealed secrets.”

“So reckless and amoral and dangerous! Every time you revealed more it only made you more terrifying, and more impossible to resist.”

“ _I_ was terrified. But you’re right. I am amoral. I steal dreams, after all.”

“And you allowed me to come back. You didn’t push me away, after—”

“After I kissed you? You don’t understand your own allure. And I had to wait and hope you’d come. All the power was in your hands.”

“Power? After I tasted you, I was powerless.”

The street they are in comes to a dead-end at a high brick wall overhung by the dark leaves of a purple beech tree, and Arthur draws him into its protection, standing with his back against the crumbling bricks.

“Tasted me?”

Eames nods. Arthur is breathing quick. His pulse will be fluttering in his throat. Eames longs to touch. Longs to take. But not here. Not from Arthur, like this.

Arthur pulls him closer and looks straight into his eyes. “Kiss me.”

“What?”

“Kiss me, Eames.”

“I don’t—”

“You haven’t, and now I’m asking you to.”

“Asking?” Eames plays for time, pulling his wrist from Arthur’s hand.

“Yes. But if it makes it easier for you, demanding. Kiss me, Eames.”

Eames places his hands on the wall on either side of Arthur’s head. Easier, also, if only their mouths touch. He leans in, presses his closed lips to Arthur’s. But Arthur opens his mouth, and he cannot resist the invitation. He tries to feel the grit of the bricks under his palms to stop himself being overwhelmed, utterly overthrown, but he cannot. To be invited into Arthur’s body like this … it is everything he has been without for so long, so very long. The slick softness of his tongue, the warmth, the sweetness. The intimacy. He could drown in Arthur. He pulls back, panting hard, before it is too late. He has always denied himself this, afraid his careful discipline would be destroyed by it, but almost drowning in Arthur has not made him desire his blood any more than he already does. It has filled — and stoked — a different need, one he hardly knew he still had, one he has not allowed himself to think about.

He stands with his hands braced against the wall, looking down, not daring to look at Arthur. He sees Arthur reach out his hand before he feels it, gentle, on his chest.

“Eames?”

He shakes his head, unable to speak. Swallows, stands up, dropping his hands to his sides, finally dares to look at Arthur.

“Eames? Are you—?”

“Alright? I will never be alright again.”

Arthur’s eyes are black, all pupil. His mouth is red. He is also breathing hard. He raises the hand that is on Eames’ chest to his jaw, to his cheek. If Eames was destroyed before, the gesture almost annihilates him with its tenderness. Arthur drags his fingers across Eames’ mouth. “Thank you,” he says. And leans in and kisses Eames, quickly, lightly, sweetly.

“Thank me?”

“For taking such a risk for me.”

How is it possible that Arthur understands Eames so deeply after so short a time, after so few confidences? He is emboldened.

“Come back with me?”

“Back?”

“To my home. I cannot risk being caught out. And I don’t know if I can risk being with you for too long. If I can’t, you can leave, but if it got too late, I could not.”

“Yes.”

“Yes?”

“You are not the only one altered by this.” Arthur smiles at him, a smile that is somehow still serious. “There are things I must tell you too, I said. If you want to hear.”

Eames doesn’t smile easily. Or rather, he smiles easily, but not sincerely. He smiles now.

“I could walk,” he says, “but it is a long way. I can’t hail a cab, though.”

“Oh,” says Arthur, “I wondered why you insisted.”

These simple exchanges give them some breathing room, a release from the intensity. They walk briskly back to a busy road where they can hail a cab. When one stops, Arthur opens the door and gestures Eames in, smiling slightly. Eames sits against the far door, avoiding the driver’s eyes as he gives the address. Now he and Arthur are on almost even ground: each knows where to find the other. They don’t speak during the journey. Eames tries not to be aware of Arthur’s scent, to no avail. The intriguing chemical note teases at him. 

When the cab pulls up, he gets out first while Arthur leans forward to pay. He opens Arthur’s door, and this time, Arthur takes his offered hand. He leads him down the steps to the basement entrance and unlocks the door. As he opens it and invites Arthur to enter, he is ashamed of its stale, dusty shabbiness. Arthur makes no comment, but he stops dead when he notices the drawings pinned to the wall.

“An artist,” he says, looking at Eames sideways. “So many talents.”

“Only two: card counting and drawing.”

“More than many people.”

“Would you like to sit down? I haven’t anything to offer …”

Arthur sits. “Do you need …?” He gestures at his throat.

Eames shudders. “No!”

“You were right,” Arthur says, his fingers on the fading mark Eames left there. “I hardly remembered until I saw it. Then it came back. Vividly.”

“I will tell you more, another time,” says Eames. “But now, you said you had things you wanted to tell. Will you?”

“Okay.” 

Eames is sitting at the opposite end of the sofa, far enough away not to be constantly tempted to reach for Arthur, seek his mouth again. And despite what he said, break the skin of his throat and take.

“Tell me about dreams,” he says. “The drug … I can smell it, I think.”

“Can you? Yes, I went under today.” Arthur leans forward with his forearms on his knees, not looking at Eames. His lean muscles stand out under his skin. “We use a device, it’s called a PASIV. It delivers a drug, Somnacin, that enables several people to enter the same dream. Not a natural dream, a constructed dream, designed to induce the mark, the person whose thoughts we are stealing, to give up the specific idea we have been hired to extract. Usually, they hide it somewhere, a safe or a vault, anywhere really. We provide a safe place, they put the idea they are trying to hide there, we steal it. Afterwards, they never know what happened. We give the material to whoever hired us, they pay.”

“How—?”

“How did I get into it? It was military tech, designed to train soldiers. The constructed dream space can be anywhere. A battleground, an office block. A village next to the sea.” His voice goes soft on the last phrase. Eames doesn’t know what to say, so he waits to hear more.

“I was trained in it by the army. But some people realised it had wider implications. The technology, shall we say, leaked out. The commercial use, the _criminal_ use, was only thought of later.”

“So that’s the project you manage? Breaking and entering someone's mind to steal their thoughts?”

Arthur glances at him, looks back at the floor. “It’s surprisingly complex. There are several roles. Someone creates the dreamspace — the architect, someone else researches, the lead is the extractor, who actually steals the target idea. I research, and keep the whole thing running.” He shrugs. “The least glamorous part, I guess.”

“You said you ‘went under’?”

“To check the architect had got the space right. That it matched somewhere the subject knows. To cause him to relax and leave the idea somewhere for us to find.”

“And did it?”

“Better than last week. I told you there were many tedious irritations. The architect is incompetent. And the extractor is distracted.” He looks up again, a wry smile on his mouth. “An amoral job. We don’t hurt anyone in the real world. But I have used violence in dreams. In dreams, I kill adversaries if I need to. I always hope I won’t need to.”

“I try not to. I wasn’t always successful.”

“Try not to kill your—?”

“My victims,” he says flatly. “I try not to kill them. Or turn them. It took a long while to train myself.”

“What made you want to?”

“To spare anyone else this awful existence. I wouldn’t wish it on anybody.”

Arthur reaches out, touches Eames’ knee. 

“I learnt how to take the barest minimum. Once doesn’t have any lasting effects. I watched them, to make certain.”

“Once? I can never give it to you again?” Arthur’s voice is wistful, almost.

“You did _give_ it to me, didn’t you. No one else ever has.”

“Have you ever asked anyone else?”

“No! Of course not. It’s absurd.”

“No, it isn’t.” Arthur’s voice is firm. “I’m glad you asked me. I was … I was afraid, but I couldn’t deny you. I’m happy I gave you what you needed.”

“I had to ask. There was already too much between us. Too much trust.”

Arthur huffs a laugh. “Trust between two thieves. I guess there was.”

“I don’t usually get to know a person before I take from them. I meet them, control them, steal from them, leave them.”

“So you don’t know, if you could take twice?”

“What I do know, Arthur, because it was done to me, was that if I take too much, you would die. Or be turned.” Eames’ voice is hard. Arthur has to understand this. He is obviously used to risk, but he doesn’t understand how grave this risk is. Even if he has risked death before, as a soldier, or as a thief of dreams, he has not risked being turned. So Eames will have to deny him the chance. Even though he desires nothing more than to taste Arthur’s blood again.

“Is this very difficult? Sitting here, talking about this? Is it too hard? Should I go?”

“No. I don’t need it, tonight. Not after last night. And you let me kiss you.”

“That’s a substitute?”

“No. I don’t know. No one else has. I’ve not … I don’t …”

“You never kiss anyone? Don’t you want to?”

“I’m not like this because I enjoy it. No matter what you’ve heard, in folklore or whatever. I hate this. I hate what I am. I do the minimum to survive. And I wonder why I even do that. Perhaps I shouldn’t.”

“Eames.” Arthur’s voice is soft. He touches him again on the knee. Despite the kiss, he has not made any gesture that could be interpreted as sexual, as a prelude or an invitation. Eames is grateful.

“Do you need me to go? You will tell me?”

He doesn’t want Arthur to leave. There’s so much he wants to know about him. Where is he from, where does he live when he’s not doing his bizarre job? What is his favourite colour? Does he like to read? Has he had his heart broken? Is he going to break someone else’s heart, over Eames? Or is he going to leave without a backward glance and go back to the person waiting for him at home and only sometimes think of this as a scarcely believable interlude?

He shakes his head. “I think I will be able to resist. What is the time?”

Arthur glances at his watch. “It’s only midnight.”

Eames gets up and raises the blind, opens the window, allows air that isn’t full of Arthur to waft into the room. That will make it easier.

“Will you tell me about the drawings?” Arthur stands up and goes over to look at them more closely. “These are from the first night at the hotel.”

“I wasn’t going to see you again, but I couldn’t get you out of my head. I drew you before, too. But I tore those up. When I tried to pretend I wouldn’t see you again. I keep thinking I will be able to resist. I kept thinking that, before. I don’t delude myself now. You told me to come back, last night. Was it only last night?”

“It was. Today was very long. I was very distracted. I was exactly what I hate in my colleagues. You were right. I didn’t remember, precisely, what … what it felt like. When you did it. But I didn’t forget the rest of it. What you said. I didn’t forget kissing you.”

“I will never forget that. I will never forget being allowed to kiss you.”

“Eames.” Arthur’s voice sounds sad. He turns away from the drawings to face him, returns to where he’s still sitting on the sofa. He crouches down in front of Eames, stretches out a hand and touches his face — that gentle, tender touch that has almost shattered him once already tonight. He is trembling, surely Arthur can feel that? He turns his face away. Arthur’s fingers drag across his mouth.

“I think you had better go now,” Eames says.

“Of course. I’m sorry if I have … pushed you too far.” Arthur gets to his feet, picks up his jacket from the back of the sofa. “Will we see each other again?”

“I think so.”

Arthur walks to the door. As he opens it, Eames says: “What is your favourite colour?”

Arthur turns back. “Red,” he says, with a tiny smile. “Goodbye, Eames.”

“Goodbye, Arthur. Thank you.”

Eames remains on the sofa a long while, eventually rousing himself to close the window and lower the blind. In the closed room, the scent of Arthur is faint, but unmistakable: wool-pomade-cologne-sweat. And the new hint of his drug. If he focuses on that chemical aroma, a lassitude creeps over him.

When he feels the daylight outside he gathers the shards of himself and goes to his bed and falls into unconsciousness.


	8. 4am

When he wakes towards evening, it is to a sort of dream: the grit of crumbling bricks under his palms, the purple gloom of the overhanging tree branches, the slick heat of Arthur's mouth. If he could weep, he would weep at the terrifying intimacy, the frightening trust that Arthur had allowed him.

"Do you always ask permission?"

_No. Never. Yes. Always. From you. Only from you, Arthur._

He gets up. In the other room, the scent of Arthur is stronger, he sits on the sofa, where Arthur sat, and looks at the Arthurs on the wall. He fetches sketch pad and pen and starts another. Arthur as he looked into Eames' eyes and said: "Kiss me, Eames."

A buzzing noise breaks his concentration. He can't quite capture the look on Arthur's face at that moment anyway: determination, fear, entreaty, tenderness.

On the table, rattling against the surface, is a mobile phone. Eames has never had one. He's never had any sort of telephone. No need, who would telephone him? Who would he ring up? And he never had one in the flat, before. If he wanted to make a call, he went to a red box. Hardly any of those left on London's streets now. Arthur must have left it behind. He gets up and goes to look at it. There is something written on the screen, but it goes dark before he can read it. He picks it up. There are no obvious buttons to press. He's seen people using them, poking at the screen. He's had to avoid them, when someone tries to take a picture with one. It vibrates again in his hand, lights up. There's a red circle with an upward pointing arrow. He pushes at it, moves his finger up the screen. Arthur's voice sounds, tinny: "Eames?" He holds it to his ear. "Arthur?"

"Good," Arthur's voice says, "you found it."

"You left it here. Shall I bring it to your hotel? Or will you come and fetch it?"

"It's not mine. I left it for you. My number is in it. If you want to contact me."

"Oh. But I don't know how to use it."

"Really?" Arthur's voice is mildly incredulous. Then he says: "I'm sorry, I shouldn't have assumed. May I come to your flat, when I'm finished here? It won't be late."

"Alright."

"Alright. Till then. Goodbye, Eames."

"Goodbye, Arthur." He lowers the phone. Now he sees, across the top of the screen, ARTHUR. He puts it back down on the table and tries to return to his drawing, but the phone, and the implications of the phone, tug at him.

Arthur said, the second night by the river, that he would like to telephone, when he had time for Eames. But he hasn't seemed to mind when he waited near the hotel, so why a phone now?

He has never been connected to another person, since before. It’s been him, alone, going out to find a victim, spending the time it took before he could take — sometimes minutes, sometimes hours — then leaving, returning home alone, until the next time of need, and doing it all again. With Arthur it was different from the start, because he didn’t begin by stalking and stealing from him. How did he know, from the moment Arthur invited Eames to join him at the bar, that he was different, that Eames himself was different with Arthur? He doesn’t know how, only that he did know. Arthur pierced his loneliness and commanded him to form a connection. Terrifying Arthur, shattering his every certainty.

What will existence be like now? He cannot know. Only that, for a time, Arthur will be in it, somehow. 

And he will be here with Eames again soon. He sits on the sofa and drifts while he waits, trying not to imagine kissing him again. He isn’t very thirsty, yet.

A knock at the door rouses him. On the doorstep, lit by a streetlight, Arthur looks tired, but he smiles.

“Please come in.” Arthur doesn’t need to be invited to enter, but it is pleasant to say it. He smiles too, wider than he would with anyone else. He wants to touch, but he waits to see what Arthur will do.

“Hello, Eames.” Arthur steps across his threshold. He’s holding a bottle in a brown paper bag. “I hope you don’t mind,” he says, “but after the day I’ve had …”

“I don’t mind,” Eames says. “I don’t have a glass, though.”

He wonders if he will be allowed to taste the whisky in Arthur’s mouth.

Arthur laughs. “Out of the bottle then, I guess.” He pulls the bottle from the bag. Laphroaig. Their first whisky together. “You don’t actually drink, do you?”

“Not now. I still like the taste, the sting on my mouth.”

“Cheap date.” Arthur smiles and unscrews the bottle cap, tipping it to his mouth, baring his throat. Eames has to shut his eyes against the sight. “I’m sorry.” Arthur’s voice has lost its teasing edge. Eames opens his eyes. Arthur is frowning, a crease between his eyebrows. “You have to tell me if I make you uncomfortable, Eames.”

“I’m alright.” It’s mostly true. There’s need, and desire, but it’s a quiet growl, not a roar. “Would you like to sit down, Arthur?”

“Yes. Another exhausting day. It’s such a tedious job. But I won’t bore you with it.” He takes off his jacket and folds it over the back of the sofa, sits down and holds the bottle towards Eames. “A taste?”

From the bottle will have to do. Perhaps later from Arthur’s lips. He takes the bottle, his fingers brushing against Arthur’s, sits down and tastes the whisky: fire and smoke.

“Tell me … tell me anything. About the day, about yourself. Tell me where you live.”

“Nowhere. I don’t live anywhere. In hotels. On airplanes. In whatever space I’ve found to work in that month.”

“Why?”

“The leader of the team ... I suppose he’s my best friend, is on the run. Accused of something … accused of causing a death. He can’t go home until he clears his name. So we’ve been doing jobs all over the world until …” He pushes his hand into his hair, “... I don’t know. It’s been a while.”

“I’ve lived here, in this room, since … since before.”

Arthur huffs a wry almost-laugh. “Opposites,” he says. Eames holds out the bottle and he takes it, sips from it. His throat bobs as he swallows. “When was … before, Eames? Will you tell me?”

"September 15, 1940.”

“That was when—?”

“When it happened, yes.” He’s looking down at his hands, at his feet, at the worn carpet.

“How old were you?”

“How old do I look?”

“Hard to say. A little older than me. Mid-thirties?”

He tips his head. “Thirty-two. It’s not such a bad age. It wasn’t, then.”

“I’m thirty.” Arthur holds the bottle back towards him but he shakes his head. “That was during the second world war. Were you a soldier too?”

He was. It’s somehow a little easier to tell him, because of that “too”.

“Yes. I was on leave. I met a man who was … not what he said. I was reckless. War made me reckless. I believed the things he whispered in the dark. I thought he would fill a void inside me. It was harder then. Do you understand, Arthur?”

“I do. Some of it. The army isn’t easy for men like us.” 

“Like us” — with two words Arthur reaches a hand back across decades and touches the Eames of then. Afraid of dying, as everyone was, but even more afraid of never being able to properly live. He’d been very unwary, all too ready to believe murmured promises, the flattery.

Arthur reaches across the small space that separates them and touches Eames’ cold hand. “Thank you for telling me, Eames.” His fingers are warm, so warm and alive.

“I can’t tell you more now. Perhaps another time.” He will have to know Arthur far better, trust him more deeply, before he can reveal anything about the fear and shame of those first terrible months after he was turned. About all the blood, before he learnt the discipline that is the only way he allows himself to remain in existence.

Arthur nods, and curls his warm fingers around Eames’ cold ones, and they sit in silence. Until Arthur yawns hugely.

“Fuck, I’m so tired. I better go.” But he doesn’t stand up.

Eames does something reckless. Does yet another reckless thing. “Stay,” he says. “You could sleep here.”

Arthur gives him a long look. “Wouldn’t that be—?”

“Too tempting?”

“Too difficult. I trust your intentions, Eames, but I don’t want to push you too far.”

He will have to fight the desire that is pooling behind his ribs, a desire that is for more than blood.

“Thank you, Arthur. But I would like to try. I’ll stay far away from you. If I … if it gets dangerous, I’ll go out, I’ll get away.”

“Okay.” Arthur nods and stands up. Eames is still seated, he looks up at him. 

“May I try something too?”

“Aren’t you already?”

But Arthur doesn’t match Eames’ attempt at lightness.

“Something you said, last night. When I asked you if you … needed, you said no, and then you said that I let you kiss me. I didn’t _let_ you kiss me, Eames, I _asked_ you to. But I asked you if that was a substitute, and you said you didn’t know, because you’d never … I’m asking very badly. Eames, may I kiss you? Can we try, and see if it is, if it helps?”

Eames can’t trust himself to speak, shattered into a million pieces as he is. But he nods, and stands up and takes a step towards Arthur, and Arthur reaches for him, raising a hand to his face, that infinitely tender gesture, and with his other hand on Eames’ shoulder, pulls him closer, his hand at the back of Eames’ head — he is intensely aware of every movement, and so afraid of making a wrong move himself. And then Arthur tilts his head just a tiny amount and presses his lips to Eames’, and Eames yields to him and lets him in. The growl he has been half aware of ever since Arthur arrived, that’s been fighting to escape his throat, rises up up up … and is quieted, like an animal gentled by a soft touch. Arthur pulls back, and murmurs into his mouth, more like a thought than actual words: “Kiss me, Eames”. So he does, and the animal doesn’t rise back up, but curls in his chest, purring. And Arthur holds him, holds all the shattered pieces of him together.

If only this could last, this peace. Eames could stand here, held in Arthur's arms, for hours. But Arthur is tired, and only human, and Eames offered him a place to sleep. 

"Arthur?"

"Hmmm?"

"Don't you want to sleep?"

"Mmmm. I guess." Arthur turns his face away and yawns again, and rests his head on Eames' shoulder, his arms loose around his waist. 

The animal stirs. 

"Arthur! You have to let me … Arthur!"

Arthur snaps to full alertness and steps away. Eames backs off.

"Should I go?" Arthur doesn't sound afraid.

Eames takes a shaky breath. "I was fine until you … it was alright, while you were in charge."

Arthur nods. "Okay. We should … I'll remember that."

He was terrified of Arthur's recklessness by the river; now he understands. Arthur is fearless — and there is safety in the difference between disregard for danger and Arthur's confident mastery. 

But not right now, right now at least some distance is safety. They stand looking at each other warily. 

"The bedroom's through there. I would be—" Arthur hasn't laughed at his melodrama before, so he says what he's thinking: "I would be honoured, if you stayed. I think I will be able to control—"

"Thank you. I'm sure you will be," Arthur says calmly. "You've proved it. Eames, I'm not afraid of you. You shouldn't be afraid for me. Or of me." He smiles.

"Alright. I'll just …" He trails off, gestures at the sofa. "Good night, Arthur."

Arthur turns away, yawning, and Eames sits on the sofa, listening to sounds he hasn't heard in decades, the sounds of someone else in his sad little flat. Small sounds: the creak of the bed frame, a sigh. He would very much like to see Arthur asleep. 

He closes his eyes and lets the last few hours replay in his mind.

Secrets told: Arthur’s homeless wandering with his friend accused of causing a death. He’s loyal, with his own sense of right and wrong, his own ethics. Not overly concerned about the letter of the law. He’s already admitted without shame that his job is criminal.

But his confession revealed something else. Arthur likes to be in control; his job is built on that. How much, then, has this running — outside his own control, for his friend, who is also his boss — cost him? He is willing to sacrifice an awful lot for loyalty.

What would it be like to be the focus of that loyalty? He doesn’t want to think about that too much. It would only make the inevitable moment when Arthur moves on to the next job with his friend, more painful. And impart a bitter taste to whatever time he has with Arthur. 

So he thinks instead about kissing Arthur, being told to kiss Arthur, being held in his arms, how calm and at peace he felt. A feeling he has not had since even before he became what he is now, an entity no one holds in their arms. Until Arthur. Is it really possible that the intimacy of kissing Arthur can replace his need? It cannot replace it completely, but could it delay the need? Could he become less driven by need? Arthur seems fearlessly willing to feed his hunger; Eames is the one who recoils in terror from that idea. 

Can he tell Arthur more about those days and nights in a cowering London, blacked out and bombed, bloodied and brutalised? Arthur had known straight away that Eames was likely a soldier at the time, but he’s young, and American, and maybe he did not grasp the context of Eames’ turning.

London then was the least safe place to be. Far more dangerous than where he’d been posted in the aftermath of the retreat from France. At least it was easy to disappear and be presumed dead (really dead) in the chaos of the first days of what came to be called the Blitz.

Can he tell Arthur more about the man? Will he have the courage to make him understand why he is so afraid of going too far?

It’s quiet in the flat. Dare he do what he has been avoiding even thinking about? He gets up and walks slowly to the bedroom. He’ll only stand in the doorway, perhaps he will be able to see Arthur’s face in sleep. Will that rouse the animal Arthur’s authoritative touch quieted? The animal that stirred as Arthur let his control slip.

Arthur is lying on top of the covers — of course he is, why would he have got under them? — turned to face the door. One hand is tucked under his cheek, his feet are drawn slightly up. His shoes stand neatly by the bed. He’s taken off his tie (the dark red one with the pattern of white dots) and opened the top two buttons of his shirt. If the collar were tugged slightly to the side, would the mark of Eames’ mouth be visible still? He is very tempted to step into the room, crouch by the bed and tweak the collar. He wouldn’t touch Arthur’s skin. 

Need growls in his throat.

Eames steps hastily backwards, retreating to the sofa. Since meeting Arthur he has felt fear for the first time in a long time. Not since he taught himself control has he been afraid of what he is capable of. If you hurt someone you don’t know, you might feel remorse, though his kind are not supposed to. If you hurt someone you know, you would feel regret. How much sharper the regret if you hurt someone you care for, someone who seems to care for you? How crippling the regret, the shame, the pain if you went beyond hurt?

Behind him, he hears a soft noise.

“Eames?” Arthur’s voice is blurred with sleep.

Eames looks over his shoulder. Arthur is standing in the doorway, his shirt rumpled, a crease on his cheek. He smells … vulnerable.

Want pricks up its ears.

“You came into the bedroom. Do you want to sleep?”

“No.” He shakes his head for added emphasis, bites down, locks his jaw. He stands, turns for the door. He must get out. It was stupid and reckless. He wanted to believe Arthur’s calm assurance; wanted to believe something about himself that contradicts everything he knows about himself and his need.

Outside, the chill night air clears his senses, washing away the scent of Arthur. The scrape of a shoe on the steps from the basement jolts him into walking away. Of course Arthur followed him out — fearless, solicitous Arthur. 

“Eames? Stop. Can we talk?” Arthur’s voice isn't raised, but it carries perfectly well: Eames’ senses are sharp and the street is quiet. Eames quickens his pace. It’s absurd to be running away again. No, he’s only doing what he said he would: if he needed to, he would leave. Arthur should be walking in the opposite direction. He should respect the rules Eames set.

He stops. Arthur stops — six feet away.

“Arthur, I warned you. I told you I would leave if I needed to. I needed to, so I left. Following me is—"

“Risky? Dangerous? What did you call me? Reckless?”

“Yes. It’s all those, Arthur. Let me go.”

“Eames, it’s 4am.”

Dawn will come soon, ending the short summer night.

“You should be asleep, safe. I should be out.”

“Hunting?”

Arthur has terrified him, but he has never been cruel before.

“Yes. That’s what I do. Stalk my prey. The clubs are letting out. Plenty of incautious drunks. Easy pickings.” 

“Eames.” Arthur sounds so sad. “I’m right here, Eames.”

All of his control snaps. He walks back to Arthur, shoves him against the wall, tugs on his hair to angle his throat. As his teeth touch the thin skin over the hot, fluttering pulse, Arthur speaks. “It’ll be okay,” he whispers.

If it isn’t Eames will walk into the dawn.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have another big chunk of this story written, but there's further to go than I anticipated, so although I will post more next week, it might not be the conclusion.   
> Thanks for coming along for the ride, please come and tell me what you think in the comments!


	9. Those nights

Afterwards, Arthur sags against the wall, looking up at Eames from under his lashes. If it was anyone else, Eames would leave him there, let him slide down till he sat on the pavement like a drunk. 

He gets an arm around him, turning his face away in an attempt to smell night air instead of Arthur, instead of Arthur’s blood.

“Arthur?” he says, “We’ve got to get inside. Can you walk? Lean on me.”

“Eames? You see, Eames, I’m alright.” Arthur is dreamy and vague, as they always are; he doesn’t start walking, he smiles. “Kiss me, Eames,” he says, his voice soft, almost pleading, not commanding.

Eames shakes his head. “No.”

Arthur looks so disappointed that he adds: “Not now, Arthur. Please walk. We have to get inside.” 

All those nights when he pushed it to the last minute, racing the light, almost daring the sun to catch him. It can’t happen now! He needs more time, he wants more time, he wants a long, long time. 

“Okay, Eames,” Arthur says, standing up straighter. “Take me home.”

Eames has to bite down on the noise that fights to escape his throat at that word.

“Come on,” he says, turning to start the walk back to his basement, distracting himself from Arthur’s softness, his vulnerability, with the urgency of simply getting off the street. He could carry him, but a man supporting his drunk companion doesn’t draw real attention, a man carrying another in his arms would. And he can’t risk being that near, Arthur’s hair tickling his face, his mouth close enough to kiss.

After what seems like a long time they reach his flat. He walked out without his key, but the door is locked.

“Where’s the key?”

“In m’ pocket. Left pocket.”

He reaches round Arthur’s waist to dig in his pocket, fighting the urge to return his mouth to where a trickle of blood runs down Arthur’s neck, biting down on his own lip instead. Arthur’s still leaning on him as he unlocks the door, and they half fall over the threshold. He catches Arthur and steers him to the sofa while he gets the door closed. The sky is lightening above the rooftops.

Arthur’s head lolls against the sofa back and he’s still smiling. “I’m alright, Eames,” he says again, “You mustn’t be afraid.”

But he is. He feels almost sick with tension. “Please, Arthur ... I have to be afraid.” He has crossed the room to sit at the table. The air is thick with Arthur’s scent: wool-pomade-cologne-sweat-BLOOD. 

It’s harder than it was in Arthur’s hotel room. Having taken rather than been given, even though Arthur almost goaded him into taking, makes it harder, more like every other time. Except he never stays with anyone after he takes, and now here they are, looking at each other across his small stuffy room.

“Arthur, listen to me. You have to leave, you have to understand, I can’t … I don’t trust myself. Please wipe the blood off yourself and call a cab and leave.”

Slowly, Arthur seems to come back to himself. He sits up, leans forward with his elbows on his knees. “Okay, Eames,” he says. He stands and looks as if he wants to come to him. Eames shakes his head, and turns his face away. “I’m sorry,” says Arthur. “I’ll leave you. I don’t want to, but I will.”

“Thank you,” says Eames. He gets up and goes into the bedroom. He hears the click of the door being opened.

“Goodbye, Eames.”

“Goodbye,” he says, too softly for Arthur to hear.

The door closes.

“What have we done, Arthur?” he asks the darkness. “What have we done?” He lies down. Arthur is on his pillow. He buries his face in it.

*

He is woken by the alien sound of the mobile phone vibrating against the wood of the table where he left it. Arthur never showed him how to make a call, but he can answer one. He picks it up, pushes his finger up the screen.

“Arthur?”

“Hello, Eames.”

Arthur still sounds vague, sleepy. There’s a smile curling through his voice. Eames remembers the feeling: a feeling of peace and warmth. A deceptive lie of a feeling. He remembers how he begged for more — and how that was his doom. If he could feel colder, he would.

“Arthur.” His voice shakes on the word. “Arthur. Where are you?”

“In bed. I slept all day. Took a sick day. I feel wonderful. I told you it would be okay. Didn’t I tell you it would be okay?”

“Arthur, it’s not okay. It’s like an addiction. If I were there … I’d go too far. You’d beg me and I would do it. You would think you felt wonderful and then … and then …”

He can't weep, but the sound that struggles out of his throat is a sob.

"Eames?"

He grinds his teeth. He doesn't want to tell Arthur how it happened, but he has to grasp this. 

He indulges himself though. Holding the phone, he walks back to his bed. He'll never be able to lie with Arthur in the dark and whisper stories to him, but he can have this.

"Arthur, I have to tell you about a frightened man in a terrifying place who trusted a liar."

"You didn't lie, Eames."

"No, I didn't lie. But I didn't tell the truth. Hush and let me tell you the truth now, Arthur."

"Okay," Arthur whispers.

"Did you understand the date? What London was like in September 1940? It was a bad time to be in London, Arthur. Almost anywhere else was safer. My bad luck I had leave then. But I had leave and I wanted something I couldn't have on duty. You know what that's like, don't you, Arthur. Having to hide what you want, who you are?"

Arthur makes a soft sound of agreement.

"So even though it was too dangerous, I went out. I was in a little basement bar, the sort you had to know the doorman to get into, when the sirens went off. It was a basement, safer than most places. The barman kept pouring, like there was no tomorrow. I suppose for so many there really was no tomorrow. 

"He wasn't a very striking man. Older, rather shabby, but courtly, old-fashioned. He called me beautiful. It was a long time since anyone had looked at me like that, Arthur. I didn't feel beautiful. I felt rather wretched. I'd survived in France when so many men hadn't. Friends hadn't … 

"It was dark, and the gramophone kept playing — dance tunes. You couldn't hear the planes overhead, but sometimes you could feel it, the rumble, the ground shaking as bombs hit. He kept talking, and then the lights went out, and he kissed me. It had been so long.”

Arthur makes a noise that sounds like sympathy, but Eames goes on.

“I should have realised how cold he was, that it wasn’t natural, but we had been drinking, it was chilly in the room, I convinced myself there was nothing wrong. He kissed me, and then he pulled my head rather roughly back, and … you know what he did. 

“The room was shaking, plaster dust was falling and I was swooning. I don’t know how long; and then the all-clear went off and he said: ‘Come with me, let’s go somewhere private’. I knew what he meant. It had been so long without … without anyone. Of course I went with him. It wasn’t a time for caution—”

“You don’t have to justify it, Eames. Of course you went with him. It wasn’t even reckless. There’s nothing wrong with meeting someone and going home with them,” says Arthur.

“I suppose so. So we went out. It was pitch dark, except for the fires. Fires everywhere, the air full of smoke and brick dust. And screams. That wasn’t right, just walking past, not offering to help. I didn’t understand until later why he was in such a hurry.” 

He has to pause to push down another memory, one from later, one he doesn’t think he could tell Arthur.

“He lived in a little basement flat. It was very out of style. I didn’t notice it then. He didn’t turn on a light. He kissed me again. And then he … took more. I couldn’t resist him, I was in a daze. We had sex. I don’t remember, but I assumed, later. He was asleep when I woke up. I let myself out and walked home. To my own basement flat. I looked terrible, but so did lots of other people. I wasn’t the only one with blood on their clothes.

“I thought that would be the end of it. Sex with a stranger who was … rather rough. But I went to sleep, slept the whole day and when I woke up—”

“You felt wonderful? Warm and peaceful?”

“Yes. I went back to his flat that evening. ‘I don’t know what you slipped me,’ I said to him. ‘Oh, you lovely boy, would you like another?’ he said. I didn’t leave there for three days. And I wasn’t the man I had been after those nights were over.” He can’t keep bitterness out of his voice.

“Eames,” Arthur says. “I’m sorry, Eames.”

“So now you know why I had to send you away. After the first couple of times the victim will be begging for it. ‘Steal it twice, they’ll give you the rest’. That’s what they say.”

“You didn’t steal, Eames.”

“No. Doesn’t make a difference, though.”

“Thank you for telling me, Eames.”

He can hear Arthur breathing. He could lie here and listen to that forever. 

“Can I never see you again?” Arthur’s voice is terribly sad. Like it was in the street, before Eames attacked him. When he offered himself.

“I don’t know, Arthur.” Arthur breathes quietly. Eames tries to picture him in bed in his hotel room. Does he have the covers pulled all the way up? Is his nightwing hair mussed from sleep, free of the pomade that keeps it so severely neat always? What does the mark on his neck look like now? Eames runs his tongue along the sharp edges of his crooked teeth.

“At least we can talk.”

“Yes.”

“I didn’t show you how to use it."

“No. You’ll have to ring me. If you want.”

“Of course I do, Eames.”

They fall silent. He can hear Arthur’s breathing getting slower, until finally it seems he has fallen asleep.

“Arthur?” No answer other than his even breaths. “Good night … darling.”

Because he has to admit to himself: he has fallen in love with this enigmatic, fearless man. It is the first time he has ever said it.

He doesn’t end the call, but slides into unconsciousness with Arthur breathing next to him.

*

He doesn’t _need_ to go out the next time he is conscious, has not yet reached his limit. But if he drank other blood, would he be able to resist Arthur? He’s not sure he would want to tell Arthur that — in fact the thought of telling him is unpleasant. It is a very very long time since he has thought of the feelings of another. 

He waits for Arthur’s phone to ring, idly sketching Chelsea Embankment — the trees, the string-of-pearls streetlamps, the river beyond the wall. He adds a dark-haired man looking out at the crane lights, their streaks of red painting the water. Arthur doesn’t turn to look at him. He’s not sure what expression he would see on his face — the confident man who said: “I would like to see you again” or the sad one who asked: “Can I never see you again?” There’s safety in the hands of the confident Arthur, and danger when the soft, wistful man comes out.

When it is much later than he has usually encountered Arthur, and the phone has not summoned him, he goes out, the device a weight in his pocket. He walks without purpose, but his steps drift towards Soho, with its clubs and bars full of people looking for someone new. He has had to be careful over the long years not to become too well known in these places, to blend in, rather than stand out as an eccentric. His body, heavy with muscle in a way that earned him the army nickname Prizefighter, is admired now, displayed in jeans and t-shirt. 

He buys drinks for a flirty boy who keeps shaking his long fringe out of his eyes in a way that displays his throat. Why should he resist if it will buy him more time with Arthur? He invites the lad to follow him to the bathroom, gets him up against the wall and tilts his chin with the touch of one chill finger. His mouth is on the thin skin over the tripping pulse, he can smell the rich heat of it, when a wave of distaste rises. It’s not Arthur. 

He forces himself to continue. It’s for Arthur that he’s doing this. It’s for himself with Arthur.

“Thank you,” he says to the boy as he finishes, wiping the trickle of blood with his thumb. The lad smiles at him, eyes hazy, as he eases him down to the floor and leaves him.

_Thank you for buying me time._

Back out on the street, fizzing with the energy of blood, he is restless. The night is only half done, no time to be going back to his lonely basement, which only seems emptier now that Arthur has been in it and gone away. 

More than anything, he wants to go to Arthur.

He pictures him asleep in his hotel, his hair loosened from its severity after a shower, the crease that sometimes forms between his brows smoothed, his mouth relaxed into sensuality.

Arthur would invite him in, if he went to him. Would Arthur kiss him? Would Arthur ask Eames to kiss him? Demand that he does? Something new to crave, a little safer than his other illicit craving. Safer for him, dangerous for Arthur. And is it really true, that a kiss could delay his need for blood? Or is it just something he and Arthur want to believe? He’s never heard of it, but it’s not the sort of thing the old ones are interested in. For them, humans are prey: necessary, but not desired for themselves. To be used and discarded — dead, or turned, or if very lucky, only swooning.

As he hesitates at the corner where he must decide — Arthur or loneliness — the device in his pocket buzzes. The novel sensation makes him flinch, he extracts it from his pocket, the screen is lit: ARTHUR.

“Arthur!”

“Eames.” The way Arthur sighs his name is both lovely and terrifying. Eames retreats from the kerb to stand against a building and close his eyes as Arthur sighs again: “Eames … will you come, Eames? Please come, please.”

_Of course I’ll come, you need me, you want me, you desire me._

“I don’t think—” he has to fight himself, force himself to say it “—it’s not safe, Arthur. I don’t think it’s safe.”

“But I want you.”

“And that’s why it’s not safe. Remember what happened, Arthur. Remember what I told you, about what it does?”

“So I’m never allowed to want you? I can’t ask you to want me? I have to demand?”

“I don’t know, Arthur. I wish I did. I want to come. Hell! I was almost on my way. I’m standing on the corner, wondering which way to turn.”

“You see?” says Arthur. “It’s simple. You want to come, I want you to come, so come.”

“Wanting is dangerous.”

“That’s absurd.” Arthur’s voice has a sharper edge. “How can you be with someone without wanting?”

“I’m not supposed to be with anyone. Least of all—”

“Least of all me?”

“Least of all a human.” His voice is flat, hard-edged. Is this how it ends? This dream of having? 

“How can you say that? You’re just supposed to be alone forever?”

“Yes.”

“Then what’s the point of it? Why even exist?”

“You think I haven’t asked myself that? Every day, every night? There is no point. It happened, I was caught, I begged for more. He gave more, he took more, until it was too late. I won’t do that to you! Don’t you see? This was never supposed to happen. I broke my own rule: never see anyone twice.”

His voice has risen, and a man glances at him as he passes. It’s all crumbling, all his defences, sliding down a cliff-face into the sea. He feels flayed open. 

But now he knows what he must do.

“I’m sorry, Arthur. It was a terrible mistake, going back to the casino. Seeking you out again, and again. It was … it was cruel. To both of us. Goodbye, Arthur. I wish you—” He stops himself from saying: I wish you a long, happy life “—I wish you happiness.”

“No! Eames, you don’t get to break up with me on the phone!”

“Break up with you? I'm saving you. Goodbye—” He lowers the phone, so Arthur can’t hear the next word: “darling.”

He turns towards his basement, dropping the phone into the first bin he passes.


	10. Dark

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In this chapter, Eames' thoughts of death come to the fore, please see the chapter end note if you would rather skip over it.

The next nights — he doesn’t know how many — and the daylights between are a grey fog. He lies in his basement with the blinds drawn even after the light has gone. 

He waits.

To cease to exist. 

But he does not raise a blind and invite a knifeblade of daylight in. Why not? Why not end it the way he has always fantasised he would? The ennui is too heavy even for that. 

So he waits for whatever life force is in him to ebb away like the tide that leaves the river mud exposed, revealing only stench and secrets.

He waits.

He tries not to think. But Arthur will not go away. His nightdark eyes regard Eames. He cannot look away. 

Sometimes Arthur looks at him with pity. Sometimes with disgust. Sometimes with desire. Sometimes he tilts his head, as he did in the casino that first night, an invitation, and he smiles a quarter-smile and Eames thinks he should walk over and join him. But he does not. Does not have the energy.

Once, Arthur says: “I would like to see you again. I will phone you and tell you when to come.”

“I don’t have a phone,” he says. “I threw it away.”

“That was stupid,” says Arthur.

Eames has no answer to that.

Later, Arthur says: “I will come to you then.” 

He waits. 

But Arthur doesn’t come. 

Good. The addiction is fading.

Maybe Arthur will leave him alone now.

But he is still there when unconsciousness returns.

“You weren’t what I was expecting, Eames,” he says.

“Nor you,” Eames tells him. Arthur smiles then, a full smile. 

But it fades, and Arthur is sad.

“Don’t be sad,” Eames tells him, “You get to live. Maybe you’ll go home soon.” Arthur never told him where home would be. Arthur never told him much at all. They could have talked, alone in two different darks. Arthur might have told him a secret, like Eames told him. Perhaps he also has a dark and terrible secret.

They could have talked, but what good would that have been? Two lonelinesses side by side, far apart in the dark, the sound of breaths passing through the air between them.

“I steal dreams,” Arthur tells him. “You had a dream. Sorry I stole it, Eames.”

Eames has no answer to that.

“Call yourself a thief? You never stole from me, Eames.” 

“I would have, though. I was going to steal your life.”

Arthur has no answer to that. He goes away.

The grey fog descends again, muffling sound, muffling thought. You can’t see through it, and the tide is ebbing.

*

Somewhere a door is banging. Someone left it open. The weather was warm and sunny, so someone left the door open but a storm came up and now the door is banging in the dark and there’s a cold wind. He should get up and close the door, keep the storm out. Impossible to sleep with the door banging like that, he should get up and close it, latch it firmly, keep the night out. He should get up and close it. He should get up and stop it banging like that. Why does it keep banging? Bang! Bang! Bang! He should get up and close it …

“Eames! Eames! What the fuck! Eames!”

Arthur came back. 

“Hello, Arthur. Did you stop the door banging? I didn’t think you would come back. I was going to steal your life. You shouldn’t have come back, Arthur.”

Arthur’s eyes are very black. Why does he look so afraid? “I didn’t steal it yet, Arthur. You can still get away. Back to your life. Just don’t leave the door open. It’s hard to sleep when it bangs. Just close the door on your way out, Arthur.”

“Eames! It was me, banging. I came back, Eames. I came back.”

He is hauled up. Arthur’s got an arm behind his shoulders, he’s got a hand on the back of his head. Arthur is tilting his own head, that familiar invitation. His throat is so close, Eames can hear the blood rushing in his veins, can smell his life. He’s so warm, so warm, his blood is hot, right there under the thin skin, so easy to break with his teeth. Arthur should be careful, Eames’ teeth are sharp.

“Arthur? You should be careful, my teeth are sharp.”

“It doesn’t hurt. No more than a needle. Do it, Eames. Take my blood.”

So he does.

It’s a punch in the chest. It’s an electric shock. It’s diving into icy water.

It’s hot, it’s Arthur.

He should stop. 

He can’t stop. 

He must stop.

He does stop.

*

Sound in the flat, someone breathing. Someone is here. He is not alone. It’s a peaceful sound, someone breathing in the dark. He is not alone. He walks towards the sound. Arthur is lying on the sofa. Arthur is asleep. Eames still … exists. 

There is blood on Arthur’s throat, a trickle. He crouches down, wipes it away with his thumb. Smears it on his mouth, like ruined lipstick.

“You came back,” he whispers. 

Arthur breathes. 

Arthur breathes.

Arthur’s scent: blood-sweat-fear. No wool-pomade-cologne. Still Arthur.

Arthur breathes.

Arthur breathes.

It is a peaceful sound.

*

“You came back.”

Arthur is looking straight at him. “You came back. You came back to me.”

Eames is still sitting on the floor next to the sofa.

“You hauled me back. Why did _you_ come back, after I told you how dangerous it was?”

“Because I felt more alive with you than I have in a long time. Because you are worth the risk. Because we can make this work.”

Eames wants to argue, but he is too tired.

“I’m just sorry I waited so long,” Arthur adds. “I was almost too late.”

“You wouldn’t leave me alone. You kept watching me, you kept talking to me. You told me I was stupid.”

Arthur snorts a soft half-laugh.

“I threw your phone away.”

“I thought so.”

They lapse into silence. It’s peaceful in the dark with another presence.

After a long time, Arthur says: “My friend ended her life. I didn’t realise in time that she … I couldn’t do anything. So I’m glad …” he trails off.

“Glad you could save me?”

“Yes. Is that selfish?”

“I don’t know.” Is he glad Arthur came back? It’s still so dangerous. “I don’t know if I think the risk is worth it, to you. You don’t understand the risk.”

“Okay,” Arthur says. He’s not fully awake, but he sounds less drugged than he did on the phone, after the second time. “Eames,” he says, “is it possible it might be safe, safer, if we wait between—?”

“But how long?” Neither of them, it seems, wants to name it. “I don’t think you’ll like this, but I could take from others.”

“I don’t, but I suppose you’re right. Not every time, though.”

And then talking about it, thinking about it, is just too much. He’s so very tired.

“I’m so tired, Arthur. Will you stay with me, in the dark?”

“Yes.”

Eames gets up from the floor, and Arthur stands up from the sofa.

“I think it’s safe, for a while. I think you’ll be safe.”

“I don’t feel so … helpless. I didn’t understand what was happening, before.”

“It’s better when you aren’t too—” he can’t think of the right word “—too soft.”

“Soft?”

“Yes. It’s better when you’re in charge. I told you that, before.”

They go to the bedroom and lie on the bed in the dark. 

Long-abandoned longing stirs in Eames, but he’s too tired to begin to indulge it, to wonder what it would be like, for him, and for Arthur. Dangerous, possibly too dangerous to ever indulge. But he hasn’t forgotten the longing — or the blissful release.

Just before unconsciousness drags him down, he asks: “Your friend, what was she like?”

“She was lovely.” There’s a smile in his voice, but it’s a sad smile.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Eames thinks about death and is letting his grip on existence slip, but does not actively do anything to bring it about. Arthur arrives in time to save him. They talk about Eames' feelings, and about Arthur's feelings about Mal's death.


	11. Control

When he wakes, he is aware of Arthur, his scent— the scent just of him, without the sophisticated top notes — his warmth, palpable even though they are not touching. Before he opens his eyes, he listens. Arthur’s breaths are the light barely-there breaths of wakefulness, not the deep steady breaths of sleep.

“You stayed all night and all day,” he says, eyes still closed.

“Of course I did.” Arthur’s warm hand touches his shoulder. 

He opens his eyes. Arthur is leaning against the bed’s headboard, his socked feet drawn up, his phone glowing in his hand. 

“Our body clocks are out of sync, but I don’t mind.”

“Didn’t you have work? Managing your gang of thieves?”

Arthur laughs. “They’ll be okay without me for a day.”

“It’s not just sleep. Everything is out of step with us. Food. You need to eat.”

Arthur hums, non-committal.

“You can’t just change yourself, deny your human needs, for me.”

“I won’t. But I didn’t want to leave you.”

“After you had to save me?”

“Eames, this isn’t a one-sided thing. I’m glad I found you when I did, of course I am. But you saved me too, you know.”

“What? How?”

“You weren’t the only one living a life of quiet desperation.” 

“But you’re a global thief of dreams. How could you—?”

“Be bored? Be restless? Be sad?" Arthur’s unhappy expression is illuminated by the phone’s light.

“Of course. One should never presume to know what another is suffering.”

“I didn’t realise that you … I came here because I was angry at you, for ditching me without a proper explanation, on the phone, too. I’d been stewing over it for days—”

“How many days?”

“Don’t you know? Seven days.”

“Before I met you, I thought about it … quite a lot. I used to imagine sunlight, Just step into it and be done. What it would feel like. The pain …”

“Eames, I didn’t realise.”

“How could you? You know nothing about this existence. You aren’t nearly afraid enough, but I am, I have to be, for both of us. If I turned you, I would want to end it. But I couldn’t then. Couldn’t do that and leave you. If you died, if I killed you, I would not hesitate. I wouldn’t be able to exist.”

“Eames.”

He’s lying on his side, looking up at Arthur sitting against the bedhead. Arthur slides down now until they are face to face, lays his hand lightly on Eames’ cheek, leans in and kisses him, chaste, close-mouthed.

“I’m so sorry. I have just made it worse for you.”

“No! You haven’t. I am afraid in ways I haven’t been, but you can’t know anything of the loneliness. Ending it with you made it unbearably heavy again.”

“We’ll just have to figure out how to manage. There must be things we can do, to make it safe. Or safer, at least.”

“Maybe. There’s no precedent that I’m aware of. I’m a freak. Most of us have no compunction.”

Arthur's mouth tightens in distaste that he can't conceal.

“Yes, I know others. The one who turned me left London, but he didn’t go far. The old ones prefer quieter, darker places. I’ve met some very old ones.”

“But once is safe. Twice. Three times. I’m fine. Maybe because enough time passed? Maybe that would be safe. What you said before, you could … take from others. I hate the idea that I would have to share you, but if that’s what it takes.”

“I hate the idea too.” He doesn’t want to talk about it anymore; this clinical discussion of ways to make the horror of his existence less terrifying; less revolting. But he wants to hold close Arthur’s saying that it would be sharing Eames.

He sits up.

“You must be hungry,” he says, hoping Arthur takes his hint. “I haven’t been out for seven nights, eight.”

“Are you proposing to take me to dinner? A date?” Arthur smiles, all his dimples on display. Eames has to shut his eyes.

“A bit one-sided, but yes. I will accompany you to a meal. I’ll even pay.”

“Well, when you put it like that,” says Arthur, and stands up. 

He’s dressed very casually for him, in dark jeans and a white shirt. The collar is marked with his blood.

“You can’t go out in that shirt,” Eames says. “I can lend you one. It’ll be a bit big.”

“The laundry thinks I am a very clumsy shaver,” Arthur says, with a laugh, while Eames looks for a shirt. He finds a white one and hands it over. Arthur tugs his from his waistband and unbuttons it, revealing a leanly muscled, tanned chest. Eames tries not to stare. 

They haven’t spoken of intimacy beyond kissing. They haven’t even kissed properly today, caught up in talking about their other intimacy. He would like to be invited to kiss Arthur, but he won’t push, afraid of awakening the animal that lives in his chest.

He turns away to find clothes for himself. And is very aware of Arthur’s eyes on him as he strips from the jeans and t-shirt he has been wearing since he went out to that Soho bar and ended it with Arthur on the phone, a week ago. He dresses in clothes he thinks of as his own, as he has every time he has seen Arthur. Perhaps Arthur would prefer more modern clothes? 

He makes no comment, but when Eames turns back to him, he says: “I had no idea just how built you are, under your clothes.”

“I boxed a bit, before. Before the war, and in the army. You get stuck with the body you have, you know, at the time.”

“Mmmmm,” says Arthur, stepping close, slipping a hand to the back of Eames’ neck. “I’m going to kiss you now, Eames,” he says, and he does, and it’s not chaste. He uses the very slight difference in their heights to dominate Eames; his hands are authoritative on him, warm and confident; his heat bleeds through their thin clothes, chest to chest, hips aligned. Eames has never been kissed like this. And then Arthur pulls back just a bit and says, very low, voice rough: “Come on, Eames” and it’s the invitation he's been waiting for. He tries to be careful, but the heat of Arthur's body, the slick softness of his mouth, the way he changes the angle subtly to alter the balance between them slightly, and then reasserts control just when Eames feels danger rising … it's thrilling; it's a complex dance that he doesn't yet know all the steps of, but Arthur does and Arthur's leading; he's giving and taking, taking and giving. In a moment when the control is all Arthur's, he takes a step forward, and another, and another, until Eames' back hits the wall, but Arthur's hand stops his head banging against it, and Arthur's hips jerk, once, twice, rough and entitled, three times, four … "Fuck, Eames, fuck!" Arthur's cry is a harsh whisper, and he's panting, rattling breaths in Eames' face and there's nothing else, no whisky on his breath, just as there's no cologne on his skin, it's just Arthur, elemental Arthur. And then he drops his head, presses his face into the junction of Eames' throat and his shoulder. He's shaking, fine tremors through his whole body. "Fuck, Eames!" But he seems to sense the moment Eames needs to get away, get some distance, and he steps back.

They stand three feet apart, Arthur's chest heaving, his face flushed and gleaming with sweat, and there's a new scent in the room — sex.

He has not been this close to another for a long long time, so very long. 

Eames backs towards the door. "Arthur, I'm going to step outside, just give me a minute, will you."

Arthur nods, pushes a hand through his hair, rubs it down his face. "Yeah," he says, voice still ragged,"yeah. Good."

It's been raining, a warm summer rain that has awakened the many smells of the street, and Eames is glad to let them layer on top of the scents of Arthur and sex that he's brought from inside. He grips the iron railing next to the steps up to the pavement — hard and cool under his palm, a counterpoint to heat and softness. 

Arthur surprised him — he probably surprised himself — but he kept enough control that Eames wasn't afraid.

Eames allows a smile to steal across his face. He’s aware of Arthur standing in the doorway behind him, but he’s keeping his distance, doing what Eames asked. He understands now. 

Eames turns to him. Neither of them speaks, but Arthur is also smiling, that smile that's serious at the same time. He nods, and Eames nods. They understand each other.

It’s a feeling of such calm, that he and Arthur could do that, that he could be with Arthur in that moment, and not lose control, and that Arthur, even falling apart — so beautifully — was aware of what Eames needed. Perhaps it’s because he had Arthur’s blood just last night, but some of it is Arthur’s competent authority — the memory of “I’m going to kiss you now, Eames” is enough to make him shiver with pleasure and relief.

He can’t take his eyes off Arthur, his hair falling into his eyes, his clothing awry and stained, but they have not yet spoken. Now, Arthur does: “I don’t want to go out after all. Will you be okay, or should I leave? You’d tell me as soon as it got too difficult? I understand now. I won’t do what I did before, that other night. That was wrong of me.” He’s still standing in the doorway, keeping cool damp night air between them.

“It was different. I felt … that you knew what I needed. I felt safe. That … what we did, would have been dangerous with anyone else.”

Arthur nods again. “Good. I hope we can make it safe to do more than that. It was a bit … one-sided. I didn’t intend to … but, god, you’re so beautiful, Eames, and seeing you—”

“Half-naked?”

“Yes. And your body, against mine, I got carried away.”

“But you stayed in control. And you understood, afterwards.”

They’re speaking quietly, but it is a little odd to be having this conversation outside. Necessary, though.

“Can you come back inside yet?”

“Give me a while longer.”

“I need to order some food, is that okay?”

“Yes, that’s fine. You’re not decent to go out, anyway.”

Arthur laughs, shaking his hair out of his face. “No, I’m not, am I.” He leaves the doorway, and Eames climbs the last two steps to the pavement. The tail-lights of a passing car reflect red streaks on the wet tarmac, like crane-lights in the river. 

_Beautiful. Arthur called him beautiful._

It starts to rain again, and he tilts his head back, letting the falling water wash over him for long minutes, until he is ready to go back to Arthur.

He’s sitting on the sofa. His hair is wet too, pushed off his face, and the shirt is tucked into his jeans, the sleeves rolled neatly to his elbows. Eames goes over to the table and sits down. Arthur frowns, a fleeting expression.

“I ordered sushi, it’ll be here soon.”

“You like raw fish?” Eames has been baffled as more and more of these restaurants have opened across London in the last several decades. He can’t understand the appeal. “I was a fish and chips man, myself.” 

Somehow it feels safer to talk like this, about things outside of them together.

Arthur smiles. “What else is weird for you now?”

“The way everyone has those phones with them all the time. I never even had a telephone in the flat. Used to go to a phonebox if I wanted to ring someone.”

“Very useful, though.”

Eames winces. _Useful to end it like a coward while standing in a busy street._

“And the way people are always taking photos of themselves. With their phones.”

“Are there things you like?”

“The way people don’t have to hide so much. Men like us. It’s been such a short time, really, but the world has changed completely. I could have been arrested, for going with him. Would have been better if I was.” He can’t keep bitterness out of his voice. “I was an easy target. A kind word, an admiring glance, a couple of pints … I begged him for more.”

“Eames, don’t. Can I come over there? Or will you come here? Can you?”

Eames nods and stands up, crossing the three steps to the sofa. Arthur also stands. He lifts his hand to Eames' face, that delicate touch. 

"I have an idea," he says. "I know you're nervous of … a gentler touch, but that's what I want you to have right now. Will you trust me?"

Eames is frowning, but he nods.

"If at any time I do anything that makes you uncomfortable, or you want to stop, for whatever reason, you can let me know by tapping twice—” he taps lightly on Eames’ cheek with two fingers “—anywhere on my body, and I will stop, no questions asked. And you can get away, no need to explain."

_To cede control, but still have an escape route._

“We can try.”

“Okay.” Arthur places one hand on his jaw, the thumb stroking lightly across his cheekbone, the other cradles his skull, and for a moment he just holds Eames. It is gentle, but Arthur is still in charge, and then he closes the small gap between them, and brushes his lips across Eames' mouth, a barely-there touch, fleeting and gone again. His mouth is on Eames' skin now, a trail of light kisses across his other cheek, before he returns to his mouth, and this time, his tongue traces the seam of his lips, asking for access, not demanding, and Eames opens to him. It’s a very different kind of kiss to the forceful kiss in the bedroom. Arthur is asking, but there's no hint of pleading. He's asking in the expectation of getting what he wants. Eames brings one hand up to Arthur’s shoulder, the other to his waist. Arthur hums, apparently pleased.

Eames has never been kissed like this, with such tenderness. Before, there had not been much time for tenderness. There had been one boy … but his tenderness, their tenderness, had been fumbling and uncertain, rushed and furtive. Arthur has the confidence to be gentle. Eames feels no need to signal a desire to escape. It is Arthur who ends the kiss, but he doesn’t move away. They are still embracing when there is a knock. It takes Eames a moment to remember Arthur’s food. He steps back, and Arthur goes to the door, returns with a paper bag that he places on the table.

“You didn’t need me to stop.”

“No. But I was glad to have the signal. Thank you.”

“Good. I hope you never need it, but it’ll be there.”

Arthur reaches into the bag and takes out a plastic box. When he opens it, there isn’t the fishy smell Eames thought there might be, but salty, briny, and sharp with something vinegary, and hot with something peppery. Too strong for his nose, he retreats to the sofa. Arthur sits at the table and delicately picks up a block of rice and pink fish with chopsticks. It looks complicated. Arthur puts the whole bundle in his mouth and chews.

“Damn,” he says, “I’m starving.”

“Not surprising. And you need to drink water, after …”

“Yes. I woke up with a raging thirst, went and drank from the tap.”

“Good. Is it … disturbing, to talk about it like this?”

“It’s definitely weird.” Arthur eats another block of rice and a white fish. “Is it uncomfortable for you?”

“It is, but we need to, I suppose.” If Arthur is going to stay, which is still utterly unbelievable. “I didn’t need to tell you to stop, before, because you weren’t … I didn’t feel like you were in my power.”

“Do you actually like that, or do you just feel it’s safer?”

_Finally, a chance to tell that secret, to put down that burden of always being in control._

“Yes, I do like it. I’m always in control with other people. I have to be, manipulating them into coming with me, taking from them, leaving them. They’re always in my power. But with you, I don’t have to be in control. It’s very peaceful, having someone else in control.”

Arthur has stopped eating and is staring at him, frowning. 

“And you like to be in control, you said that, at the bar. I thought I liked to be in control, but I have realised I don’t, I just have to be, with others. And it _is_ safer. You know it is. When you plead with me, or offer yourself, that’s when I feel that I could easily go too far. And that terrifies me.”

“I do like to be in control. Eames, and not just at work. It’s … quite a deep need. Fuck, I can’t believe how we fit together.”

They look at each other across the space and something clicks into place inside Eames. This really could work. 

Arthur is smiling, that look that’s also completely serious.

They don’t need to talk anymore. Arthur concentrates on his food, and Eames drops his head back against the sofa and concentrates on the new aromas and this new understanding of the two of them together. He doesn’t really believe in luck — he counts cards, after all — and nor does Arthur, with his loaded die and his attention to detail, but just as going to that particular basement club on that particular night in 1940 turned out to be bad luck, going to that particular casino on that particular night not very many days ago is turning out to be good luck.

When Arthur is finished eating he comes over to the sofa. “I should go now, Eames. I’ve got to go to work tomorrow.”

“And you need clean clothes for that,” says Eames, attempting lightness he doesn’t feel.

“Yeah, and a clear head. May I come tomorrow night? Will you be okay?”

“I can go longer without. But I don’t know how long I can go without, when you are with me. We can try. But you have to agree that if it isn’t okay, if I need … I will go out.”

“That’s the hard part, for me. I don’t like to share.”

“But there’s no safe alternative. You have to trust me on that. I don’t want to, but I may need to.”

Arthur nods, and turns to leave. Eames gets up to let him out, but before he can open the door, Arthur stops him with a hand on his shoulder, turning Eames to him.

“Eames, I’m going to kiss you again.”

Being warned like this feels safe, but the authority in Arthur’s voice is also thrilling. Arthur comes close, and picks up both of Eames’ hands, lifting them above his head, holding them against the door with one hand on his wrists while he slips the other up the back of his neck. Eames could easily break Arthur’s hold, but that’s not the point, and he has no desire to. Arthur doesn’t press his body against Eames’ or prolong the kiss; as he steps back, he drags his thumb across Eames’ slick mouth. 

After he closes the door, Eames stands with his back pressed against it, dragging his own thumb across his mouth and allowing himself to imagine, if not a future with Arthur, at least a journey of discovery. Arthur’s already made him understand things about himself he had not fully admitted in a century of existence.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You may have noticed the chapter count went up. A planned single chapter morphed into these three chapters. There should be two more, and I hope I will have them ready by next Friday, but I'm afraid I can't be sure. I will post at least one next week.
> 
> Come tell me your thoughts in the comments, there's nothing I like more!


	12. Restrained

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The rating has been raised to explicit, and please heed the new tags.  
> There's nothing very hardcore here, but Arthur is a more complex person than he seemed when I started writing this.

He doesn’t have to wait long after becoming conscious the next night before Arthur is knocking on the door. He goes to open it.

“May I come in?” Arthur looks tired, even a bit crumpled.

“Yes.” He steps back to let Arthur in, his warm aliveness animating Eames’ space again. How did he live here alone for so long, when after just a few visits, Arthur has made it seem empty and cold when he is not here? What will it be like when he inevitably leaves? A question for another time, now, Arthur is here.

“Hello,” he says. They are standing quite close together.

“Hello.” Arthur’s eyes drop to his mouth. “May I?” Eames nods and Arthur steps in close to him, raises a hand — warm, confident — to the back of his neck, places the other at the small of his back and kisses him, a greeting, and more. 

Eames is in danger of surfeit, after so long without, like a child at a birthday party.

And then Arthur runs his tongue along the edge — the sharp edge — of Eames’ teeth, and his blood, infinitely desirable, leaks into Eames’ mouth. Too soon! He slaps at Arthur’s arm, but Arthur is already dropping his hands and stepping back also.

“Oh god,” he says, “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I didn’t realise. That was so stupid of me.”

Eames opens the door and goes out into the night air. The damn animal in his chest is growling. He didn’t need it tonight, he was sure he didn’t, but given a taste … he wants more. The railing is cool and hard and the evening air is a little chilly.

“Eames?” Arthur’s voice is quiet. It’s like last night, he’s halfway up the steps and Arthur is standing in the open doorway. He doesn’t turn back to him.

“I should go.”

Eames nods, but Arthur probably can’t see that. “Yes,” he says, voice rough. “Sorry.” He climbs the rest of the steps.

“Yes. I’ll just close the door?” 

Eames is barefoot; he wasn’t ready to go out. “Yes. I’ll go …” He gestures vaguely and crosses the street. 

Arthur climbs the steps and stands on the pavement and they regard each other as if on opposite banks of a river. A passing car blocks Arthur from view, but when it's gone, he's still there; then he nods, as if telling himself something, and walks off down the street. Eames crosses back over and goes inside. He can still smell Arthur there. He can still taste him. In both scent and taste, there’s a bitter chemical note — Arthur’s dream drug? And for all that he has just woken, Eames feels sleepy. He sits on the sofa, lets his head fall back and drifts. He’s not nearly as tense with possibility and fear as he should be. 

A chirruping noise drags him back to consciousness. On the sofa cushion lies a mobile phone, very like the one he dropped in a street bin. On its screen: “ARTHUR”. He picks it up. “Hello, Arthur.”

“Eames! Are you … where are you?”

“At home. You woke me.”

“Woke you? It’s only 20 minutes since …”

“Well, I was … not awake. Which is odd. I can taste your drug, I think.” He’s not sure why he said that.

“My drug? Somnacin?”

“I suppose. Unless there’s another drug.”

“No! No, there isn’t. And I did use it today. That’s strange though, it doesn’t have a residual effect on us. Once the timer runs out, you wake up and you’re fine.”

“Probably not related then. Might still be recovering from … before.”

"I'm so sorry, Eames. I just didn't think. "

"You know they're sharp."

"Yes. Yes, of course I do. I got carried away."

"In a more dangerous way than yesterday. One of us is always going to get carried away. I won't always be able to stop, Arthur. I panicked, I couldn't even give your signal."

"You didn't have to."

"Not this time." 

Arthur is quiet.

"Arthur? Are _you_ alright?"

"Hmmm? Yes, I'm okay. It was so little."

_Too little._

"What if it's cumulative? Arthur, I only know what I've observed, what happened to me. I don’t know how it works, not really.”

“Not something I could research. That’s what I usually do, when I’m on uncertain ground.” Arthur huffs a laugh. “What I do for a living is pretty out there, but I know the rules. And how to find out the things I don’t know. This is—”

“Far past ‘out there’?”

“Eames,” Arthur’s voice is sad, and gentle. “It’s worth it, though. I’m not sure I could explain to anyone else, but it is. To me it is.”

“Yes. For me too.” He listens to Arthur breathe. “Talk to me?”

“That’s why I left you another phone. For when it’s not safe to see each other.”

“I’ll try not to throw it away.” He can hear that little puff of breath that’s almost a wry laugh.

“Good. What shall I talk to you about?”

“Tell me … where did you grow up?”

“Okay. I grew up in a boring little town in Indiana. It was sort of great, though. A whole gang of kids. All summer, no adults minded where we were. Good place to be a kid.”

“We also ran wild. When I was a boy. Very few fathers around to stop us.”

“That was during the First World War?”

“Yes. Then some of the fathers came back. Mine didn’t. I hardly remembered him. But tell me more about your life. Did you stay in your small town? You don’t seem like someone from the middle of nowhere.”

“Well, it was a good place to be a kid. Less good if you were a gay teenager. So I left. Got into a good college.” 

“And then the military. Why?”

“Debt. Restlessness. I joined the Marines. Structure suited me. I was good at it. And good at hiding. Good at secrets. Maybe that was why I got chosen for the dream project.”

“I imagine you were fearless.”

“I liked the challenge. And when it leaked out, I decided I preferred not taking so many orders, so I left.”

“And became a criminal.”

“What we do is outside the law, but it’s not violent in the real world. We just put a finger on the scale for people who pay us.”

“I’m in no position to judge you. I didn’t mean to sound as if I was.”

“That’s okay. It is criminal, I’m not defending it. It is what it is. I’m good at it. I like that very much, being good at it.”

“And the other, being in control?” It is very intimate, talking like this, just voices. He would hesitate to ask in person.

“When did I discover that?”

“Yes, how?”

“I suspected it was a streak in my personality. I’ve always been most comfortable when I am in control of my surroundings, when I know what is going to happen next, when things are going according to plan.”

“The military must have been a trial, then.”

Arthur laughs. “Yeah. Lots of structure, not so much control.” 

He falls silent, and Eames waits for what he will say next. 

“It was then that I realised, learned — off base — that there were other ways to have control, that there were people who might want to be on the other side of that. I like that it’s a two-way transaction. It’s not something you force on someone. You give them structure and they give you … submission. Or rather, trust. It’s a very powerful gift to receive.”

Eames feels almost faint with the rightness of what Arthur is saying. It’s the complete opposite of what he has to do. It’s not a gift he gives, or receives. He knows he is supposed to like manipulating and taking, stealing. He’s meant to revel in the power he has over his victims. But he does not. 

“How …?” His voice trembles a little as he asks. This is a gift in itself that Arthur has given him, the chance to be vulnerable. He had not realised how he missed it.

“How do I exercise control?” Arthur’s voice is gentle.

“Yes.”

“Physically, with restraints. Rope. Knots.”

“You tie them up?”

“Yes. It’s a specific practice. Japanese in origin. It can be very beautiful. It looks beautiful, but also, the act of doing it is … it’s hard to explain, but it’s almost soothing, meditative.”

“For you?”

“And for the person being restrained, if it is done with proper care. That’s the non-physical part. I give them something they need, profoundly. It’s a kind of control. They cede it to me.”

“Yes.” Eames hears his voice: a dreamy exhalation.

“Is that something that might interest you?”

“I think so. Yes.” Arthur doesn’t respond immediately; Eames listens to him breathing. “It would be … it might mean I would be less likely to … go too far. To do something I would regret. To you. To harm you.”

“That’s not usually what people need from it.”

“No, of course not.” He tries not to be disappointed. Last night, Arthur said they fitted together so well, because Eames didn’t want control, and Arthur did, but of course what he needs falls outside what Arthur wants.

“But we could explore that, Eames. We are in a pretty unique situation.” Eames hears a quick intake of breath, like when Arthur gave him permission to take, the first time. “It’s so long since I’ve had someone to talk to about this. Who wants what I have to give.”

“And you’ve been in a situation where you don’t have control. On the run with your friend. It seems that would be even harder for you than for most people.”

“God, Eames, yes! Exactly. I hate it. It’s not that I can’t improvise. I don’t need or even want the structure of a regular job, but the longer it goes on, the harder it has become.”

“Couldn’t you find an outlet? There must be places to meet like-minded people. There are always places.”

“There are, but I have never liked that, when it’s simply a transaction between strangers. It can scratch an itch, but it’s unsatisfying.”

“You need to know the person?”

“Yes, because how else do you trust?”

“So how do you meet the right person?”

_How had Arthur guessed something Eames had not even truly known about himself?_

“It’s difficult. But you learn to pick up subtle clues, I suppose. What made me think that you might want it? Nothing you did or said at first. The opposite, really, when I saw you counting cards. That's not the action of a man who isn’t in control. 

“But that wasn’t what I noticed first, of course. You caught my eye for the simplest reason of all: you are so gorgeous. I was looking at you, who wouldn’t? And then I noticed what you were doing.”

“Because you do a similar thing, with your loaded die.”

“Yes.”

“As you said, it’s not gambling, what we do.”

“No, I hate games of chance.”

“As do I. So when did you realise? About me? I mean, why else would you continue to meet, if you didn’t think I might have the sort of … desires that interest you?”

“You intrigued me.”

“And you were bored, like me.”

“Yes." 

Arthur pauses again. Eames waits.

“When you ran, I wondered if I had done something that you wanted without knowing you did. I had realised there was something different about you, when we shook hands the first night, but of course, I couldn’t guess the truth.”

“No one can. It’s so outlandish, no one entertains the idea.”

“No. But as I said, I was intrigued by you, by everything I thought I understood about you. Walking by the river, you surprised me when you said ‘I’m a thief’. It’s not something someone would usually confess.”

“Your reaction terrified me. You just smiled. I thought you were totally reckless. It was only later I realised that you are actually fearless. And confident. Masterful.”

“And a criminal myself.” 

Eames is certain Arthur is smiling as he says this, just as he smiled when he said: “Plenty of good thieves.”

“But when I kissed you, I realised there was something very dangerous about you.”

“You were surprised. Well, of course, anyone would be.”

“But you ran, which was also unexpected.”

“Not what my kind are supposed to do.”

“I didn’t know, exactly, what … who you were. But I had to suspect. And then you ran, instead of overpowering me. And that was confusing. When I thought about it afterwards, I did wonder. And when you told me the truth, I wondered even more. What your running meant about you.”

“I was terrified of going too far, of being overwhelmed. I am not usually afraid of that. But you … affect me as no one else has.”

“And then you came back. I told you, I was waiting for you to come back. That’s not something I’m used to either — waiting.”

“It must have been even more confusing when you felt the urge to submit to me, after I took your blood.”

“It was powerful enough to overturn what I thought I knew about myself.”

“It’s an addiction. You see why I had to end it with you. I was sure you were going to fall under my spell. And I felt too much for you to allow that. When you caught me leaving the casino, after you told me to meet you there, I was trying to leave and never see you again. To protect you.”

“But you kept coming back.”

“I kept telling myself I was only going to watch. Or that you would have left. That I’d be fading from your memory. I’m not memorable, usually.”

“Not memorable? That’s ridiculous, you’re the most memorable person I’ve ever met.”

When Arthur does leave, Eames will have these words to keep him afloat, maybe. That Arthur thought he was memorable. That Arthur called him a person.

“You are the first who has known me, even a little, since before. And even then there were not many. I had to live in the shadows. We all did, then. I mean the sort of man I am, not what I became. Of course, now I exist even more in the shadows. Rather a bitter irony: if I wasn’t undead, I might have had a chance at some kind of honest life. Not like what you have now, but some degree of happiness.”

“Eames …” Arthur’s voice is so sad.

It’s dangerous when Arthur feels pity for him.

“Don’t be sad, Arthur. You’ve given me something I’ve never had. Even if it can’t last. Don’t be sad, tell me something else. Tell me about the Japanese ropes.”

“Okay.”

Arthur is probably only allowing himself to be distracted out of kindness, but Eames is grateful.

As he describes the ropes, how they have to be made smooth and supple, cared for and cleaned, carefully wrapped and tied, Eames imagines what it would be like, to be restrained by Arthur’s knots, and thus free.


	13. Trust

He wakes just before dawn, from what seems like a dream — did he and Arthur really share such deep intimacies of mind and desire? No one has spoken to him with such naked honesty in all his decades of existence, not before, and not since. And he has never before let down his defences, even the ones in his own heart. After such a profound shift, can he return to what was before Arthur? No.

He retreats to the deeper darkness of his bedroom and passes the daylight hours in waking dreams of what might be; dreams he does not believe can become reality. He has never before allowed himself to imagine another kind of existence; now he cannot stop himself.

When darkness falls outside at last, he dresses carefully and goes into his sitting room to wait. He raises the blind and opens the window to admit cool night air. What will Arthur want tonight?

And then Arthur is at the door. He seems tired again tonight, he has taken off his tie and the top two buttons of his shirt are undone. They look at each other: does Arthur feel as uncertain as he does? All those secrets whispered across the air between them make being seen again more difficult.

“Eames,” he says, and the corner of his mouth lifts in a quarter-smile as he steps over the threshold. Eames wants to reach for Arthur, wants it to be safe, wants Arthur to put his confident hands on him. Wants it even more now that they have confessed their desires. Wants Arthur to show him new things.

Arthur comes closer, lifts a hand, asks: “May I?” and in answer to Eames’ nod, ghosts the back of his fingers down Eames’ cheek, his jaw. The lightest of touches, and unexpected after Arthur’s explanation of ropes and restraint. Eames shudders with the thrill of it. Arthur comes even closer, slips his hand to the back of Eames’ neck and kisses him. But they are both careful not to slip again and the kiss is brief.

“I have something for you,” Arthur says, dropping his hand, putting a little distance between them.

“A gift?”

“Yes.” He reaches into his pocket and withdraws a small container, like a test tube, stoppered, and filled with red liquid.

“Blood?”

“My blood.”

The idea is mildly distasteful; Eames has never heard of such a thing. His uncertainty must show on his face.

“I thought,” says Arthur, frowning, “that it would be safe. I won’t be affected, will I, if you don’t take it directly from me. And I won’t have to share you. And afterwards, it will be easier for you, won’t it? If you drink you won’t have to be so vigilant. I just want to make it easier for you, Eames. Might it work?”

“I have no idea. I’ve never heard of it. But I can try. In theory, it should work.”

Arthur smiles, a full smile. “Thank you,” he says, and hands the plastic vial to Eames.

It is warmish, probably from being in Arthur’s pocket. Eames reaches for Arthur’s hand. “Come sit with me?” Arthur nods, and they sit on the sofa. Eames unscrews the orange lid of the vial and raises it to his mouth. His hand trembles. It smells like Arthur, but there’s a note of something else — like the memory of milk just before it turns. As he drinks it off, he focuses on the Arthurness rather than the tepid temperature and the oddness of the experience. 

He would not choose this, but if it means Arthur stays safe, while his need is sated so he can let down his guard, just for a short time, it will be worth it.

Arthur’s eyes haven’t left his face. “Was it okay?”

“It was very strange. The temperature was a little unpleasant.” He doesn’t remark on the taste.

“Do you think it’s worked?”

Even though it was Arthur’s blood — he knows Arthur’s taste — the quenching of his thirst feels detached from Arthur.

He lifts his hand. “May I?” he asks.

Arthur nods, and Eames tilts his chin up and back with careful fingers, and drops his mouth to that spot where Arthur’s pulse flutters under his thin skin. The desire to break the skin is present, but he can override it. He drags his lips over the place he has marked again and again — marked just the other night, when Arthur refused to let him slip away. The mark has mostly faded, but he fancies he can feel its shape, the ragged print of his crooked teeth. Arthur’s skin is hot and now it’s almost as if he tasted his blood there. He bathes in the aromas of Arthur — his wool-pomade-cologne-sweat evening aromas — and moves his mouth across his skin. Arthur’s hand comes to rest on the back of his head and he pushes back slightly into it. Usually, the only outlet he has for blood-energy is to walk fast through the city, the memory of the man he got it from irrelevant. Each time he has had Arthur’s blood, they have been together for at least a short while afterwards, and he has had to suppress the desire to take more. Now, what they hoped seems to have worked. He wants Arthur, not just his blood. A need he has long ignored begins to reawaken.

"I think it worked," he says, breathing it across Arthur's pulsebeat.

He lifts his head, and moves his hands to the buttons of Arthur’s shirt, looking at him for permission.

“Let me take off my jacket,” says Arthur, sitting forward to do that. As he sets it aside he reaches into the pocket and pulls out his red tie, laying it on the sofa arm. He doesn’t say anything as he leans back again, just gestures at his shirt front. Eames slips off the sofa and comes to kneel in front of Arthur, who makes room for him between his knees. He raises his hands to the shirt buttons again, pushing the first carefully through the buttonhole, and then another, spreading the fabric open over Arthur’s chest, slipping his fingers under it. Arthur shivers at his chill touch and Eames withdraws.

“Don’t stop.”

He returns his hands to the smooth planes of Arthur’s chest, and then undoes another button and another, looking at Arthur to be sure this is welcome.

“Go ahead, Eames.” Arthur licks along his top lip; his breath hitches as Eames lowers his mouth to his skin. Before Arthur, it was a very long time since he had touched another with any intention except the most basic necessity. To be able to do this, to have Arthur’s skin under his mouth and not bite down, to be able to move lightly across it, tasting, feeling its texture, noting Arthur’s breathing, the way he masters his involuntary flinches, is the most precious part of Arthur’s gift to him. 

“Thank you,” he breathes.

Arthur’s hands have been resting on the sofa either side of his thighs, now he pushes them into Eames’ hair and tugs lightly. Eames tips his head back. Arthur is smiling. “Thank _you,”_ he says. “That was a gift to myself as well, to have your beautiful mouth on me in a different way.”

To be desired, truly desired, for who he is, and not just because of the compulsion of what he is, is almost overwhelming. The last to give him this was the man he has mourned since France, where they took comfort in each other, but furtively, always terrified of death or discovery, of being shattered or shamed.

“I want—” Arthur starts, and then cuts himself off. “No. What do you want, Eames?”

“To keep touching you. To feel your hands on my body. Is that enough? I … it will be enough for me, but not for you, I think.”

“It’s enough. It’s more than enough.”

“I want to be certain I can restrain myself before we … I want you, Arthur, but I’m still afraid of what I am capable of. I do feel … freed from compulsion, but I want to be sure.”

“How long is it since you were touched, Eames?”

“Not since May, 1940. I don’t count the one who turned me.” 

He doesn’t want either of those two from the past to intrude here, though. He dips his head, his hair slipping from Arthur’s fingers, and undoes the last buttons, sliding his hands across Arthur’s stomach, pulling his shirt tails from his waistband, curling his fingers around Arthur’s waist, sweeping up his chest again, over his peaking nipples — Arthur’s sharp inhale is a lovely sound — he dares to lean in and flick his tongue across one — Arthur moans and shifts against the sofa, slumping down. And Eames becomes aware — _how was he not, until now?_ — of Arthur’s hot blood, filling his cock, the scent of his arousal. It’s too soon, he does not dare test his self-control like this. He leans back. Arthur lets him go, his hands sliding from his head to his shoulders, touching, not keeping him in place.

“Eames?” he asks. “Too much?”

Eames nods, his hands on Arthur’s thighs to push himself to his feet.

“I don’t trust myself.”

“What do you need me to do?”

“Nothing. Just …” What he really wants is to watch Arthur fall apart, even if he can’t participate.

“Eames, would you like to watch me?” 

“Yes.” His voice is a whisper.

“Okay.” Arthur nods. “There’s another thing I would like to give you, then.” He picks up his necktie from where he put it on the sofa. “Would you allow me to restrain you?”

“Tie me up?”

“Yes. Just a simple knot with this.”

“Won’t that ruin it?” He’s stalling while he processes this idea. It’s what he said he wants. What he dreamed about.

“I don’t care about that. I chose this because I wanted your first binding to be something of mine, intimately mine. And because I think it will look beautiful against your body. Nothing you could do would ruin it.”

Arthur wraps the tie around his hand, its dark red silk gleaming against his skin. Eames imagines what it will look like against his nightpale skin, what it will feel like — smooth, supple, but firm.

“Where?”

“Your bed is perfect.”

“Alright.” The idea is thrilling.

“I don’t think you need to be restrained for my sake, you know. But you said it might make you feel safer. I’ll untie you as soon as you decide you don’t want it.”

“But what about control? What you want?”

“That can come later. It’s a separate thing, it doesn’t need to be sexual at all.”

Arthur stands up, but respects the distance Eames put between them.

“Alright,” Eames says again, and starts across the few steps to the bedroom. He stops by the bed, its iron frame offering Arthur many places to tie him. “How do you … where do you want me?”

“I would like to see you.”

“Naked?”

Arthur tilts his head. “As much as you want.”

Eames sits down on the edge of the bed and leans down to untie his shoes, takes them off, and his socks, stands up again. “Would you like to …?” He gestures at his shirt buttons.

“Yes.” Arthur steps forward, puts the tie on the bed. “I want to kiss you too,” he says.

Will Arthur taste the vestiges of his own blood in Eames’ mouth? 

He nods, and Arthur undoes the top button of his shirt, and presses his mouth to Eames’, slipping his fingers under his collar, deepening the kiss, pressing his thumb to the spot under Eames’ chin where his pulse would beat. And then withdrawing and undoing another button, returning to his mouth, his warm fingers on his collar bones under the cloth, returning to the buttons, so that Eames follows him, unwilling to lose his mouth, and he can feel Arthur’s smile against his lips as he unfastens another button and another and another until he can push Eames' shirt off his shoulders and down his arms, trapping them. He shudders at the sensation, and Arthur smiles — a quarter, a half, a full smile — and runs both his hands down Eames’ chest, before tugging the shirt off and letting it fall to the floor.

“Enough?” he says, and Eames nods. “Okay.” He steps closer, against Eames, and pushes until the backs of his thighs hit the mattress and he is forced to sit down. He looks up at Arthur, waiting for the next move, his hands braced either side of him.

Arthur picks up his left hand, runs his thumb across his knuckles, turns it over, raises it to his mouth, drags his lips across the palm. 

_How can that feel so charged? So erotic?_

“Thought I was going to watch you,” he says, voice ragged.

Arthur hums, the buzz of it against his skin sending a jolt through Eames. “Soon.” He leans down to pick up the tie, his bare chest brushing against Eames’ shoulder. He needs both hands to knot it around Eames’ wrist. Eames holds his hand up while he does it, forming a loop that isn’t tight on his skin, but is unyielding, the knot firm, creasing the silk.

“Will you lie down? On your back.”

Eames moves to the centre of the bed and lies down. Arthur picks up his hand and raises it above his head, reaching for the dangling end of the tie to loop it around one of the iron bars of the bed. Eames raises his other hand and waits for Arthur to fasten the second knot. He could be lying with his hands linked behind his head. But he is not. 

Arthur bends over him, the fronts of his shirt brushing against his skin. “Is that comfortable? Not too tight?” He pushes a finger into each loop, there is easily space.

“It’s fine.”

Arthur nods, satisfied, and steps back, trailing his hands down Eames’ chest.

“You can’t give me the signal if you want to stop, so we’ve got to have a safeword.”

“What do you mean?”

“A word that you can use to tell me to stop. For any reason, you don’t have to tell me why. It’s better to use a word that wouldn’t come up otherwise, that we agree on ahead of time. Okay?”

“Anything random?”

“Yes. You choose.”

He can see the point of it, but he feels a little awkward. “Alright … river?”

Arthur smiles. “Good. River.”

He steps back and bends down to take off his shoes and socks. He stands, his hands on his belt buckle, his eyes locked on Eames’ as he unfastens it and pulls it free. His trousers are snug on his hips, the belt doesn’t hold them up. His hands briefly outline his crotch, his hard cock a sizeable bulge, and then he opens the button and lowers the zip of his fly. He’s going slowly, but not putting on a show. He pushes his trousers down and steps out of them. He is wearing tight black pants. 

He is so beautiful. 

Arthur climbs onto the bed and comes to kneel astride Eames’ legs, his knees their only point of contact, gripping his calves, making Eames wish he’d taken off his trousers. Something for another time.

“Do you want more than to watch? I do, but only if you do.”

“Your hands. On my skin.”

Arthur’s smile is wide and happy. He walks on his knees until he is over Eames’ thighs. He leans forward, hands on his chest, weight pressing him down, and then he draws back, still touching his skin, but lightly, sweeping up, drifting fingers along his collarbones, back down, and up, fingers grazing Eames’ nipples — he gasps — putting his weight on him again, bending low and pressing a kiss to Eames’ throat, to the hinge of his jaw, to the corner of his mouth, fully on his mouth. They are chest to chest, skin to skin. Arthur straightens, dragging his hands down, all the way to Eames’ belt, spanning his waist, slipping his thumbs under the waistband of his trousers, pressing down. Eames arches into the touch, his whole body trembling with sensations that he has not experienced for so very long. That he did not expect to feel, so long has he suppressed and denied them. That he is not sure he is ready to follow to their conclusion. Arthur’s dark eyes are full of questions, and he tilts his head in wordless, eloquent enquiry. Eames shakes his head. “Not now.” His voice is rough. 

Arthur bends down over Eames again, his hands on the pillow either side of his head. “When you are ready.” The words are little more than a breath. Arthur is too close to see clearly. He brushes an almost-kiss across Eames’ mouth and withdraws. Eames raises his shoulders off the mattress, the tie’s silk sliding up the iron bar it is looped around, until he can grip the top rail and hold himself in place. Arthur returns, his chest to Eames’ chest, his hips to Eames’ hips, his hard, neglected, leaking cock against Eames’ stomach. Eames rocks his hips up.

“You still want to watch?”

Eames nods. “Yes.” His voice grates in his throat.

Arthur places his hands — his lovely, strong, long-fingered hands — on his own body, stroking down his chest, his stomach, tracing the grooves bracketed by his hips, hooking his thumbs in the band of his black pants, pushing them down. His cock springs free.

He is so very beautiful.

He does not take his eyes off Eames as he brings his hand to his mouth and licks the palm. Eames’ mouth waters and he strains forward against the bonds of Arthur’s knots, trusting Arthur’s restraint, free of fear. Arthur meets him, kisses him deep and messy and holds his hand up to Eames’ mouth. Eames licks the palm too, and lies back as Arthur wraps his hand around his length, his eyes falling half-shut as his tongue traces his bottom lip, and moves his hand in long slow pulls, twisting his wrist and rubbing his thumb over the slit, collecting the wet there, smearing it to mix with their saliva — his mouth on Arthur’s cock, almost. Arthur’s breath is harsh, gasping, panting as his hand speeds up and his hips jerk, thrusting; his thighs are trembling with the strain of holding himself up, and then with a sharp thrust and a bitten-off cry he climaxes, his come splashing hot onto Eames’ stomach. His eyes fall shut and his face relaxes into softness and he sags onto Eames’ thighs. 

He is almost impossibly beautiful.

Eames draws his knees up, settling Arthur on his hips, Arthur’s arse against his groin. He’s not fully hard, but he can imagine it now. Another time.

Arthur opens his eyes. He’s smiling in that way that is also utterly serious. Eames feels an answering smile stretching his mouth.

Arthur starts to wipe his hand on his pants.

“Don’t.”

“Don’t?”

“Let me taste you? I’ve tasted your mouth, and your blood, and all your scents. Let me taste.”

Arthur rises to his knees again and bends low over Eames, holds his hand up to his mouth and lets him taste the bitter salt of him. The animal in Eames’ chest, leashed by Arthur’s careful knots, growls and is satisfied.

“Thank you. Stay here?”

Arthur nods, and wipes his hand on his briefs and pulls them up off his thighs; he lifts one knee across Eames’ body and leans forward to undo his knots. When the first one is loosened he lowers Eames’ arm, massaging his stiff shoulder, pulls the silk from around the iron bar and lowers Eames’ other arm, trailing the red tie.

“Leave it on.”

The look Arthur gives him is one of complete understanding. “Of course,” he says, and lies down next to Eames, his warmth seeping into his skin.

And Eames’ chill seeping into his, until he is shivering, and rigid with trying not to.

“It’s no good, darling, you’ll have to get up. Get warm.”

It just slipped out.

Arthur sits up, and leans back down and kisses Eames, all his many tastes mingling on their tongues.

“Eames,” he breathes into his mouth, making his name into the tenderest endearment he has ever heard. “Eames.”

Another tremor shakes him. “I want to stay with you,” he says.

“But not almost naked.”

“I guess not. I hardly noticed before.”

“Would a bath help?”

“Will you bathe with me?”

They lie together in hot water, Eames resting the wrist still bound in dark red silk on the edge of the tub.

“I felt free,” he says, looking at it looping like a line of blood up his arm. “Your gifts gave me that.”

Arthur’s head is resting against his shoulder. He turns his face and presses his mouth to his skin. “Thank you for giving me your trust.”


	14. Dream

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Only one new chapter this week. Work kicked my arse and stole my writing time.

Arthur leaves after dawn, just as Eames begins to slide into unconsciousness after watching and listening as Arthur slept, his even breaths coming not through the ether, but from right next to Eames. Watching and listening and dreaming of finding the courage to trust himself to have what he has not allowed himself to want — until now. When Arthur gets up, Eames slips under the covers, into the warmth left by Arthur’s body, and watches as he dresses. When he is done, he bends over Eames and brushes his lips across his mouth. “Go to sleep.” He touches Eames’ wrist, still bound in dark red silk, and turns and is gone.

And then he is there again, stepping quietly into the bedroom, bringing his daytime scent of wool-pomade-cologne-sweat, and the chemical aroma of his dream-drug, sitting on the bed and pushing his hand into Eames’ hair, leaning towards him: “I need to kiss you, may I?”

“Need?” 

“Not like that. Normal need, desire. I want you, Eames.”

Eames turns on his back and Arthur bends low, taking each of Eames’ hands in his own, holding them firm, anchoring him. 

As he sits back up, he says: “I’m free now. The job’s finished, we did the extraction today. I told him to leave without me.”

Eames sits up too, his back against the iron bars of the bed.

“What are you going to do now?”

“I want to stay here with you. If you want that.”

Of course Eames wants, but he has not allowed himself to really think of it. Arthur has upended his existence, but he always assumed it would end. In his real world, it would end.

“With me? But what about him, your friend? What about your job?”

“What about us?”

“You would give up your life, everything you know and are good at?”

“I would choose a different life, with you.”

It’s an impossible dream.

“You don’t understand what you are saying. What I have isn’t a life, it’s an existence: a never-ending, never-changing existence. I’m condemned to darkness. You might think you could live like that, but you couldn’t. You have no idea what that’s like, never to see daylight, never to see sunlight. To have to fear it!”

The more he says, the more he brings his pain into the open, the more terrifying the idea seems. Arthur looks as if he wants to answer, but Eames plunges on.

“What do you think you’d do? Have me at night, waiting for you, and then go out into the daylight where I can never follow and do whatever it is your skills suit you to other than dream thieving and gambling with a loaded die? Would we go out together at night, gambling, walking by the river, or would it just be you out there and me trapped here, waiting? Would you tie me up and keep me for yourself? You don’t like to share.”

He holds up his wrist, trailing the dark red silk. “Maybe you should tie me up again right now.”

Arthur jumps up from the bed, eyes blazing. “Don’t be ridiculous, Eames! I don’t want to trap you. You don’t understand either! What I want isn’t a prisoner or a slave, confined and waiting for me. I want someone who wants what I can give, who freely gives me what I need. I thought you wanted that too.”

“Maybe I thought I did, when it was just a fantasy. But that’s all it ever was. You wouldn’t be able to give up everything. I don’t want you to. It would be a half-life for you and I would be consumed with guilt. You’d come to hate me soon enough and leave, and I would be … I would walk into the sun. I’d have what I crave for one moment and then it would end.”

“Eames.” 

_Why does Arthur want to be with him when he makes him so sad?_

“I don’t know exactly how it would work, but don’t you even want to try?”

“When I thought it would last only a short while, I thought we would give each other … something and then you would have to leave, for your job, for your friend, and it would be hard to let you go, but I could do it, because I wouldn’t have imagined a future with you. And you wouldn’t have upended your life for me, who can’t give you what you deserve. I would have had more than I ever dared hope for … I already have had more than I ever thought possible.”

Arthur is standing against the wall. _Have they touched for the last time, without even knowing it?_

“I do want a different kind of life. I need it. You were right when you guessed the toll it’s taking on me, the lack of control over my own life.” Arthur’s anger is gone too now. “I couldn’t go on the way I was with Dom. I was starting to hate it. I didn’t want to hate him.” 

“But don’t you see? The sort of life you would have with me … you would start to hate it too, and me, for trapping you in it.”

Arthur lets his back slide down the wall, until he is sitting on the floor.

“I’m just so tired of my life, Eames. I went to that casino to win a game of chance and drink a good Scotch. A bit of time to myself. I didn’t expect to meet someone who intrigued me, but I did. At first, I didn’t expect anything more from you than flirtation, maybe sex. But you are so much more. We are so much more, together. I felt such a profound connection with you, here in this room. I thought I could stop running and stay with you.”

“I also wish I could have a different existence, but it’s only a dream, don’t you see? I’m not sorry we met, or for anything else between us, but I am sorry for you, that it was me you met and not a real man who could give you what you need. It wasn’t fair, but nothing’s fair.”

Arthur stands up. “ _I’m_ not sorry it was you I met. But I’m going to leave now, before we ruin everything. Goodbye, Eames.” He reaches out, as if he would touch Eames, but then he turns away and leaves. 

The finality of the door closing echoes through the flat. 

Even though it’s night and he could go out and look at other people, people who aren’t a dream he can’t keep, he lies back down and closes his eyes and tries to forget. But there is no forgetting Arthur. From the first night, he has been trying to force himself to forget Arthur and he has never been able to. How much more impossible now — because Arthur is right, something deeply meaningful happened on this bed not even 24 hours ago. It’s not fair, but then nothing has been fair since September 1940.

The night passes and the sunlight comes. He should stop thinking about it and do it, run his hand along its knifeblade. 

But Arthur is in his head, smiling at Eames after allowing him to share a profound intimacy, after letting him see and hear, and touch and taste; after letting him imagine having that after such long denial, even if the idea scares him. Arthur restraining him and giving him freedom from fear. Arthur understanding why he wanted to keep the tie on. And him defiling that with his taunt. He knows that isn’t what restraints mean to Arthur. Fear made him say terrible untrue things, made him throw Arthur’s uncertainty and nakedness back at him. 

But he also spoke truth. Arthur should not give up his life to live a half-life with Eames, to live in darkness with him, or leave him trapped in darkness while he goes out into the light. Leave him trapped in his forever-youth while Arthur goes forward into age where Eames also cannot follow. He sees Arthur’s nightwing hair threaded with silver, the lines around his eyes deepened with laughter and a life lived, his strong, sure hands knotted with age and still beautiful.

It is too painful.

He closes his eyes and waits for unconsciousness to take him.

Unconsciousness refuses to take him.

Arthur will not leave him in peace.

Arthur will not leave him.

Arthur will not leave.

Eames gets up from the bed and walks to the table where he left the phone. Arthur never showed him how it works, but how hard can it really be? There is a single button, he presses it to see what happens and the screen lights up: “Swipe to unlock”. The screen changes: a series of circles, one contains the representation of the sort of telephone he recognises. He touches the picture and an index opens — an index containing only one name. He touches Arthur. He raises it and waits, listening to the facsimile of a ringing telephone.

And then Arthur: “Eames?”

“Arthur. Did I ruin everything?”

“Did I?”

“You terrified me. You should not be willing to give up your life to be with me. But I hurt you, and I am sorry. It was wrong for me to say what I did. Your restraints free me.”

The hand holding the phone trails the dark red silk; he runs the fingers of his other hand down it.

“I didn’t think about the effect on you of what I said I want. You’re right, I didn’t understand the pain of your existence; I probably still don’t, how could I? But I do understand feeling trapped and powerless. I feel that now, and there have been other times in my life. I found one way out, and I thought I could just … find another.”

“It isn’t escaping if you go from a cage to a prison.”

“Fuck, Eames.”

“I don’t think there is a way to solve it. But I wanted to say sorry for saying you would trap me. I know you wouldn’t do that. But I am trapped, and I would still be trapped, and it would hurt even more sharply. Before you came I was dead inside and I used to think about inflicting pain on myself, just to feel something. You woke me up and gave me more than you can ever know, but it hurts because it’s an impossible dream.”

On the other side of the city, Arthur breathes, and Eames can hear a hitch in his breath.

“Don’t be sad, Arthur. It’s an impossible dream, but what you gave me was beautiful. I’ll never forget it. That wasn’t a dream.”

He hears a sharp intake of breath.

“Eames!” 

“What? What is it, Arthur?”

“Eames, I have an idea. I need to think it through, though. Would you meet me by the river when it’s dark?”

“Under the lights?”

“Yes.”

“Alright. Outside is good. Ten o’clock?”

“Yes. Outside is good for me, too.”

*

Arthur is waiting under the string-of-pearls lights, leaning against the river wall, looking out over the red-streaked water.

“Eames,” he says, turning. “Thank you for coming.”

“Of course.”

“Shall we walk?”

They walk together under the summer trees. The breeze off the water lifts Arthur’s hair. He hasn’t combed it severely back with pomade and it falls across his forehead.

“Do you remember the other night, when I made a mistake and you tasted my blood?”

“Of course.”

“When I called you, you said you hadn’t been awake, even though it was so early in the evening.”

“Yes, I felt … dazed, drifting.” 

“And you said you could taste the Somnacin. I said it doesn’t work like that, when the timer runs out we wake up and we’re fine. We don’t feel dazed and dreamy afterwards.”

“Yes. What timer?”

“The machine, the PASIV, has a timer, each minute on the timer represents time in the dream, longer than a minute. A minute up top, here, outside the dream, is about 10 minutes in the dream. So if we set the timer for five minutes, we have almost an hour in the dream, and when the timer runs down, the dream is over and we wake up. But that’s not the important part. The traces of Somnacin in my blood seemed to affect you, even though it was hours later. What if you can dream?”

“I can’t. I don’t.”

“But Somnacin dreams aren’t real dreams. They’re constructed dreams. And they are shared dreams. More than one person experiences the same dream, because the Somnacin is circulating in their blood together.”

“I don’t have blood.”

“But you drink my blood, and the Somnacin in it affects you. What if we could share the same dream?”

He sounds so excited. Eames can’t follow how it all works, how Arthur thinks it would work, what would be achieved by it, but Arthur sounds so excited.

“So you would take the drug, and I would drink your blood and share your dream?”

“Yes. And the thing about Somnacin dreams is that they are incredibly real-seeming. It’s not like a sleeping dream where you can’t really influence what happens. The world of the dream is as detailed as the dream-architect makes it, and the dreamers can act within it in rational ways. Eames, I’m a very good dream-architect.”

“I thought you were the planner?”

“Yes, I am. And when there’s a bigger team, that’s what I do, because I’m very good at it, but I can build. I build beautiful worlds.”

They have stopped walking and are standing looking at each other. The lights are reflected in Arthur’s nightdark eyes. He is incandescent with ideas. 

He is so very beautiful.

“Eames, please let me build you a world. Please try to dream with me.”

The other thing Arthur asked him to try — the two other things — gave Eames what Arthur thought they would.

“Alright. I will trust you.”

“Eames, it might not work. I think it will, but we won’t know until we try. I know what I’m asking is a big risk.”

“We both took a risk on each other before.”

“Yes. I’m very glad we did.”

“So am I.” He reaches out for Arthur, and Arthur gives him his hand. “I want to kiss you. May I kiss you?”

“Please.”

He lifts his other hand to Arthur’s face, trailing the tie. He could have taken it off. Arthur smiles, and takes hold of the silk, and Eames puts his mouth on Arthur’s mouth, and hears that sharp intake of breath, and he seeks and is given access.

There by the river, under his beloved lights, anchored by Arthur’s confidence, he promises to take a leap into the unknown with him.


	15. Another place

The silver metal briefcase Arthur opens on the floor of his sitting room contains a baffling machine with dials and a glass receptacle — the Somnacin chamber, he explains.

“You don’t actually need to understand exactly how it works,” he says. “The Somnacin is the important thing, that’s what allows one to experience a constructed dream. The machine delivers the dose, and allows several people to be in the same dream together. But it’s always one of them actually dreaming. So, it will be my dream, and we’ll share it because we are sharing Somnacin. Just not in the normal way. God, I hope it works, Eames. I really want to give this to you.”

“So do I,” says Eames, touching the clear tubing Arthur is unrolling. “But aren’t you worried about me taking your blood while we’re unconscious? I might take too much, Arthur.”

He has been wrestling with the idea ever since Arthur proposed it. He should not have agreed, but he was too weak to deny Arthur, to deny himself what Arthur is offering: another place, where the laws that govern the real world apparently don’t apply. Eames already lives in one such place.

“I’ll set the timer for just a minute, Eames, surely that’s not long enough for any real harm? It’ll be just a glimpse of the dream, at first, until we understand the effects on me.”

He fits a cannula to the end of the tubing. “This is the needle I was talking about. I’m very used to the sting of this needle.”

He pours a clear golden liquid into the glass chamber, turns a dial, turns another, and sits down on the sofa. 

It occurs to Eames that each time he has taken Arthur’s blood, except on that very dark night, they have been standing. It’s easier to stop that way. He prefers it against a wall, not comfortable — or intimate. Not how it was done to him. He sits next to Arthur now. Arthur inserts the needle in his wrist, a brief scowl his only reaction to the pain. The tube is still empty as he turns to Eames, slips a hand to the back of his head, and kisses him. “Come dream with me,” he whispers, pulling back and leaning forward, depressing a button on his machine. “Now, Eames,” he says, leaning back.

Eames lowers his mouth to Arthur’s throat, and lets his teeth break his skin.

The already beloved taste of Arthur’s blood contains that chemical tang, and the delicious rush of “Arthur! Life!”is followed immediately by a brief lassitude.

\--

He is no longer in his dim London basement, but on a shaded veranda looking out into a stone-paved courtyard.

A courtyard bathed in sunshine. 

He looks round for Arthur. He’s sitting in a wicker chair, exquisite in linen trousers and a loose white shirt, his hair a tumble of waves, longer than it really is. Eames looks down at himself: he’s dressed in similar fashion. A Panama hat lies on a low table between their chairs, alongside two condensation-beaded martini glasses.

Arthur smiles, and reaches for his glass, raising it in a silent toast. Eames lifts his too, and brings it to his mouth. It’s perfect, the driest of dry martinis — just how he liked them. He wets his lips with the icy sting of it. 

“How did you know?” he says, voice breaking a little. 

“About the sunshine? I heard you, Eames. I guessed about the rest.”

He doesn’t want to look away from Arthur, but he wants to look out into the sun’s light.

“Would you do something for me?”

“Of course.”

“Would you walk out into the sun for me, so I can see …”

Arthur sets his glass down, and comes to Eames’ chair. He braces his hands on the arms and leans down and kisses him. And then he straightens and steps out of the veranda’s shade and into the sunshine. And turns to Eames, smiling at him, squinting slightly. The light reflected off his white shirt is almost blinding.

He is the most beautiful sight Eames has ever seen.

Eames fights the urge to step out into the sunshine with Arthur, afraid of what he has always craved. He doesn’t need the pain of the sun’s blade to make him feel now, and he doesn’t want to lose a second of whatever brief time he has here, so close to true light.

Arthur walks back to him and Eames stands and opens his arms and pulls him close and presses his face to Arthur’s shoulder, the sun-heat bleeding into him.

“You’re not cold,” says Arthur. “Eames, you’re not cold.”

“It’s your warmth, the sun.”

“No, Eames, your skin is warm.”

\--

The first thing he is aware of is Arthur’s pulse fluttering beneath his skin, under Eames’ mouth. He sits up. Arthur’s head is still tipped against the sofa back, his eyes closed.

“Arthur!”

Arthur opens his eyes and smiles lazily. “Eames.” His voice is soft, that terrifying dreamy softness.

“Arthur!”

“I’m alright. I’m okay.” He sits up, touches his fingers to the mark on his throat, the trickle of blood there, offers them to Eames. He takes Arthur’s wrist in his hand and sucks on them. 

“Thank you. For everything. Seeing you there, lit up by the sun … I’ve never seen anything lovelier.”

Arthur touches his other hand to Eames’ cheek. “You were warm,” he says. “I didn’t expect that.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes, absolutely.” He sits forward, about to take the needle out.

“May I?”

Arthur gives Eames his hand, watches as he eases the needle out. A drop of blood oozes up; he presses his thumb over it, tempted, but not desperate. “This is a terrible thing to have to stick into yourself,” he says. “Over and over again. What a strange job.” He’s avoiding thinking about what the dream might mean. He knows too little about it to guess.

Arthur holds out a small plastic container and he drops the needle into it. Arthur rolls up the tubing and packs the whole apparatus away. Perhaps he is also trying to avoid dealing with the implications of what they just experienced.

But then everything has been done; there’s nothing more to hide behind.

“How do you really feel? You sounded a bit affected.”

“A bit, but not badly. How do _you_ feel?”

“Satisfied, but not surfeited. I don’t think I took very much.”

“Yes, I don’t feel you did.”

“But it was only one minute.”

“Not long enough.”

“Probably not.”

“No, I meant in the dream. You didn’t have enough time in the dream. You didn’t have time to really enjoy it.”

“It was beautiful. Everything about it was beautiful. Where were we?”

“It was mostly a villa in Tuscany. Some people think it’s dangerous to use places you’ve been. I don’t really agree. I used a place I love.”

“The sunlight! I’ve only seen light like that once. I went to the south of France in ’35. No matter how hot it ever got in England, the light was never like that here.”

“I’m glad I chose well.”

“I wanted to feel it, but not in the way I have thought of feeling it here, like a blade to hurt myself with. I thought it might feel like a blanket, like a blanket of heavy wool.”

“Why didn’t you let yourself?”

“I didn’t want it to end. That would have been terribly selfish, to end it, right in front of you. I don’t want to end it now.”

Arthur is frowning. “Oh god,” he says. “I never told you. Eames, if you’re injured in a dream, it doesn’t affect you here. And if you die in a dream, you just wake up. It ends the dream.”

“So even if ...” 

He could have it. 

He could walk into the sun.

“Even if you are harmed in the dream, you won’t really suffer.”

“But it might be horrible. For you. It might be horrible to see.”

“Aren’t you afraid of what it might be like for you, to experience?”

“No. It would be worth it, to feel sunlight again. I wish we could go straight back there. It’s too dangerous for you, though.”

“I guess so. I _hate_ not knowing. I’m used to being able to find out what I don’t know.”

“You won’t find truth in anything written in your world. I only know what I discovered for myself. About how little I could survive on. And I only learned how much it takes to turn a victim from the one who turned me. The first time doesn’t do it.”

“Now we know that even repeated small gifts don’t either.”

“Gifts?”

“Yes. You have never taken from me by force. Not even the second time. I wanted you to. You overcame your own reluctance by force. I didn’t feel coerced. I never have.”

“But don’t you see? That’s how it works, the victim always thinks they’re giving, after the first couple of times.”

“But you asked me the first time. You gave me a choice.”

“I don’t think we’d be here if I hadn’t. You would never have given me a second chance.”

“No. I don’t respond well to being coerced.”

There’s steel behind those words. The words of a man used to being in charge. But Arthur is warm and relaxed beside him.

“What do you think it meant, that I was warm in the dream?”

“Part of the way a dream works is that the dreamer influences not just the physical elements, but also aspects of the other participants, particularly those he is close to. I dreamt up your clothes, for instance.”

“To match yours.”

“Yes, they suited the weather. And I liked the way you looked in them.” Arthur lays his hand on Eames’ thigh, on the light wool of his trousers. Suitable for an English summer, but not for a Tuscan one.

“And you dreamt up a damn fine martini.”

Arthur huffs a laugh. “Yes, it was pretty good. You didn’t drink any, though.”

“I can’t.”

“Not here.”

They are still circling the main point. 

Arthur’s hand feels very warm, in contrast to his chill. Arthur felt warm in the dream, in Eames’ arms. Would he have felt warm even without the contrast? He’d been standing in the sun, after all. 

“So you dreamt me not cold because you wanted it that way? I understand why you would.”

“No, I didn’t consciously dream you warm. I was surprised — in the dream, I was surprised.”

“Yes, you were. What do you think it means?”

“I don’t know. I need more evidence, or something. More data. I also wish we could go straight back.”

But for now, they are here, sitting together. Arthur’s warmth soaks into him, all along his side where their bodies touch. Arthur must feel his chill. The way Arthur kissed him in the dream, leaning down over him, caging him with his arms — he hasn’t done that here, yet, but he held Eames’ hands down when he kissed him before their misunderstanding. He turns his head against the sofa back. “Kiss me.” Perhaps Arthur will hear his thoughts.

Their faces are inches apart, almost too close to see him clearly, but his eyes and his mouth are smiling. “Mmmmm,” he says, and his tongue darts out to lick along his top lip, that gesture he’s been teasing Eames with since the beginning, except now it’s not a tease, but a promise. Arthur raises a hand, trails the back of his fingers along Eames’ cheek, thumb dragging across his mouth. And then he stands up and turns to Eames and straddles his thighs — knees on the sofa cushion, hands on his shoulders — and leans his weight on him and presses his mouth to Eames’. And Eames yields to him, his whole body straining towards him. His hands find Arthur’s hips, drawing a groan from him straight into Eames’ mouth. That, more than anything, lights a spark in Eames, kindles a hot flame of desire where he has been cold and dead all these decades. Hotter and more insistent than with Arthur before, when he explored his body and drew back, afraid. 

Afraid of something he has denied himself, a denial on which he has built an entire structure of discipline and moderation, of restraint. Of course the kind of restraint Arthur offers appeals to him, his own restraint and control give him freedom from guilt, Arthur's offer freedom from fear. 

The trust he gave Arthur, trust that he would keep him safe, would not push further than Eames could go, was given back to him when Arthur trusted that he would not take too much. Each of them trusts in the other's restraint. 

That's how they fit together so well, he sees — not because Arthur needs to control, and Eames wants to be controlled.

“What do you want, Eames? Let me give you what you want.”

For so long, he has only allowed himself what he absolutely needs.

“Your hands. I want your hand …” 

The last man he loved had beautiful hands, too.

Arthur nods. “Okay,” he says, and leans back a little, moving his hands from Eames’ shoulders, trailing them down his chest. His eyes aren’t following his hands, he’s looking straight into Eames’ eyes — can he see how unsure he is? how want and fear are at war in him? They are both fully clothed, and yet he feels utterly naked.

Arthur spreads his hands, fingers flexing, thumbs brushing Eames’ nipples.

His body is coming alive under Arthur’s touch, there’s no other way to name what is happening.

“You feel so good, Eames.” And at last, Arthur’s eyes leave Eames’ and follow his hands as they move down his body. “May I?” he says, tugging gently at where his shirt is tucked into his trousers, rubbing his flat palms back up Eames’ chest, pure heat, stopping with his fingers on the first button.

“Yes.” His voice sticks in his throat. “Please.” He watches as Arthur unfastens it and slides his hands under the cloth, and curls his fingers, scratching lightly, and returns to open another button and push the shirt fronts apart. His hands are dry and a bit rough and so warm! It would almost be enough, just this, this aching, slow, careful focus, but he is aware of more than just the skin Arthur is touching as his hands move lower and lower until he reaches his belt. He pulls the shirt free and looks up again, waiting to undo his belt buckle. Eames nods. The tiny metallic sound is very loud in the quiet room and the leather — soft from long wear — sighs as Arthur pulls it from the belt loops, Eames arching his back away from the sofa to let it pass. A picture of it wrapped around his wrists flashes into his mind and he’s certain he sees it in Arthur’s eyes too, but he sets it aside and returns to the waistband of his trousers, fastened with hooks that Arthur deftly slides open. He smiles when he sees the buttons that secure the fly, and undoes them slowly. Eames is grateful for all the time this has given him — time in which the heat of Arthur’s hands, of his body, the weight of it on his thighs, has stoked an ever hotter flame. But Arthur’s hands stop when the fly is open, he looks up Eames again, and leans in, curls a hand round the back of his neck and pulls him forward and kisses him, hard and searching.

“Alright?” he asks.

“Yes.” He can barely form the word.

Arthur rolls his hips towards Eames, and then he leans back again, and slips his fingers under the band of Eames’ pants.

It’s a shock like electricity — the mere brush of Arthur’s fingers is the most intense sensation he has ever experienced, heightened by his want, by his long denial, by his fear, by Arthur’s patient tenderness. 

The sound he makes is a sob.

“Eames?”

He can’t respond, beyond leaning his forehead against Arthur’s, his hands bruisingly tight on his hips.

“You can tell me to stop, remember.”

He shakes his head awkwardly, lifts his hips, seeking more, and Arthur’s lovely hand wraps around his cock …

…

…

It can’t be hours.

It could be an eternity.

Arthur moves his hand. 

If Eames had a heart that could stop …

His whole body is shaking, shaking.

He is held in the safety of Arthur’s hands — the one gentle, hot, moving on him, the other a vice-grip on the back of his neck.

The shaking builds and focuses into a spasm that rolls through him, curling his toes, rattling his spine, bowing his back, pooling in his groin — the memory of release.

An impossible release, now. And yet, a release. His hands can no longer grip, his shoulders sag, his head falls back.

Arthur’s hands, his body, have taken Eames to another place, somewhere he thought he would never visit again. 

Chains he has been bound by — chains constructed from bitter anger, self-denial, loneliness — loosen. They are not gone so easily, but they feel easier to bear, less confining.

_“Arthur.”_

Arthur’s breath is hot in his face and loud in his ears. The hand on the back of his neck is soft now. Arthur lifts his other hand to Eames’ face; there is nothing to taste, but he drags the thumb across Eames’ mouth, presses in. It feels like a promise.

He leans against Eames, his weight and his warmth anchoring him.

“My god, Eames,” he says.

Eames can only nod and turn his face so he can see Arthur properly. So Arthur can see he is smiling. And at last, he can say: “Thank you.”

For what Arthur has just given him, and for what he gave him before, with his dream machine. Within a few short hours, Arthur has given him two things he thought he would never have again. One he has craved and feared, one he has tried never to think of, afraid of what having it might make him do.

He is greedy for more. He is very good at waiting, long practised in not-having, but now he is greedy. For sunlight on his skin, for Arthur's skin under his fingers, under his mouth. For warmth, for heat.

*

They sleep together in the dark, exhausted with emotion. He wakes when Arthur stirs, and this too is something precious, to be not-alone at last. Arthur speaks quietly.

“I’m going to go now, back to my hotel. May I check out?”

It takes him a minute to understand what Arthur is really asking.

“And come here?”

“Yes. Only if you want. Would that be possible for you, to have me here?”

“You want to give up the luxury of that place and come here?”

The room is dark, he can’t see Arthur’s face properly. “Yes. If you think it could work. Could we try?”

Arthur can’t see his face properly either, can’t see the hope. “We could try.”

Arthur gets up then, sliding out from under the covers. He smells warm and intimate. Eames watches him dress, jeans and a t-shirt are put on all too quickly, and then he bends and kisses him and is gone. He gets under the covers, into the warm and intimate Arthur-space, that kindles a flame — so soon! What will it be like, to have him here for long spans of time? Everything Arthur gives him satisfies his need in different ways. With Arthur, it is not a craving that must be sated at all costs, with little regard to the one he takes from. He can ask, and Arthur will give — his blood, his mouth, his hand, his knots, even his absence. They can try this, together.

He drifts, half dreams of sunshine, of Arthur in sunshine, the way the light struck sparks off his nightwing hair, the way he screwed up his eyes against the dazzle and looked back at Eames, an invitation on his face Eames was too afraid to accept. Next time he will. He will feel sunlight and a far more profound craving will be, not filled, perhaps restoked, awakened, flaring even hotter, like the craving Arthur has awakened in his body. The time he will have will be brief. He will step straight into the light the next time Arthur takes him to that other place.

And then Arthur is back, in the bedroom, bringing with him the scent of cool city air, and all his other scents. No pomade though, his hair brushes Eames’ skin as he bends over him, freed from the constraint Arthur imposes on his working self. Eames turns on his back, stretches his arms above his head, half inviting Arthur to capture his wrists — Arthur sees the invitation, and smiles, and accepts it. It is not actual restraint, Eames could break his hold with no effort, he is stronger than Arthur, but if he has his own boxer strength and the added strength of his kind, Arthur has the strength of his authority, which Eames has gladly accepted. 

“Would you like to go to Tuscany again? Or is it too soon?”

“Of course I want to go. I don’t feel an overwhelming need yet, for your blood. But it was so short a time. I’m greedy for time, and that could be dangerous, for you.”

“I have an idea. If I give you blood before, might you be satisfied, and take only a little while we dream?”

“You mean in a vial?”

“Yes. But fresh. Still hot. I’ll draw it here, I have what I need.”

The idea starts a hum in his chest, starts his mouth watering. Will he be able to watch, and not want it straight from Arthur’s vein? But there is a solution.

“Will you restrain me?”

There’s a complicated expression in Arthur’s eyes. “Are you afraid of yourself still?”

“A little. And I liked it, how it felt. Against my skin. In my head.”

Arthur’s hand tightens on Eames’ wrists. “Yes,” he says, “if that’s what you want.”

The red tie, too creased for Arthur to wear again, is on the table by the bed, where he put it when he came back from the river.

Arthur is wearing a suit, a paler grey than any Eames has seen him wear before. He stands up from his seat on the bed and takes off the jacket, rolls his sleeves to his elbows, and steps into the other room. He returns with a plastic box that he sets on the table, picking up the tie.

“Will you sit up? Hard to drink while lying down.”

Eames sits and Arthur picks up his left hand, brushing his thumb across the knuckles before fastening the tie around his wrist. Eames puts his hands behind his back, leaning forward to give Arthur room to reach, pass the tie around the bars and secure the other wrist. He bites down to keep the groan in his throat from escaping. The smooth silk slides on his wrists as he leans forward, testing the binding, straining against it to feel it bite gently. He lets his head fall back so he can look up at Arthur, calm flooding through him.

“Damn, Eames. I need my hands steady.” A half-smile quirks Arthur’s mouth and he bends down and kisses him before reaching for the plastic box and sitting on the end of the bed. He opens it and sets a strap, a syringe and a vial on the mattress next to him. He pushes up the sleeve on his left arm, tightens the strap around his bicep, picks up the syringe and uncaps it. Eames should be able to watch him insert the needle, but he is tempted to avert his eyes from Arthur sliding the gleaming steel into the vein in the crook of his elbow, pulling the plunger back so the chamber fills with his blood. When it is full of deep red, he withdraws the needle and sets the syringe carefully on the box lid, quickly releasing the strap and pressing his thumb over the puncture wound. It can’t be easy for Arthur to do this to himself, perhaps there will be a time when he could help. The scent of the blood fills his nostrils, but he must wait for Arthur. He takes a sticking plaster from the box and applies it to the wound, and turns to pick up the vial. “A glass would be better,” he says, frowning as he releases the blood into it. “I’ll get one.” Eames’ mind goes back to a delicate cut crystal glass his grandmother used to sip sherry out of, one of her few pretensions.

Arthur holds the vial up to Eames’ lips. He nods and Arthur tilts it. The hot, rich deliciousnessfloods his mouth. And this time it is almost as good as taking it with his teeth, because he is looking into Arthur’s eyes as he drinks. It is better in fact, because he has never looked into the eyes of anyone as he took their blood. And he didn’t take this blood, it was given to him, with care and painful sacrifice. When he has drained the vial, Arthur sets it aside, and raises his hand back to Eames’ face, and he leans into it, feels the pulse throbbing in the wrist, pushing blood through his arteries and veins. Eames turns his face so he can drag his mouth across the place, safe from any need to break the skin.

After a while — Eames couldn’t say how long, Arthur goes into the other room and returns with the silver case.

“How long should I give us?”

“Long enough to feel the sun. We’ll go to the same place?” 

“Yes. I like it there. You didn’t see it all.”

“It seemed lovely, but as long as the sun is shining, that’s what I want.”

“The sun will be shining. It will always be shining for you.”

That is perhaps the kindest thing anyone has ever said to him.

“Shall we do five minutes? Remember that’s almost an hour of dream time.”

An hour in the sun. It won’t be enough. But it will be longer than he has ever imagined having. At his lowest, he imagined an instant, and then the pain of obliteration, and it seemed that would be a worthwhile bargain.

An hour in Arthur’s sunny Tuscan courtyard is a beautiful gift.

“Alright,” he says, “An hour of sunshine.”

Saying it aloud makes it more real, it’s almost too much to grasp.

Before he opens the case, Arthur undoes the knots binding Eames. The position was a little uncomfortable after a while, but the feel of the silk as he pulled lightly against it, the certainty of knowing he could do no harm, the tenderness with which Arthur ministered to him, these were all worth a great deal more than the minor discomfort. “Thank you,” he says, “for tying me.” Arthur holds his wrists in a loose grip and nods, but he doesn’t say anything. 

He lays the case open on the bed, and carefully pours a larger dose of the liquid into the glass chamber. He uncoils the tubing and inserts the needle that will pierce the back of his hand. Twice within so short a space of time makes Eames shudder. He never did like needles, but he wishes he could help Arthur with this part. He would try to be very careful, gentle. 

When the needle is in place, Arthur turns the dials and presses the large button and sits back. Eames lowers his mouth to the pulse in Arthur’s throat, and bites.

\--

They are on the same veranda, standing at the step into the courtyard. Eames looks down and sees that they are wearing the same loose linen clothes as before. 

“Ready?” 

Eames has the Panama hat in his hand. He puts it on his head.

“Ready.”

How can you be ready for something you have yearned hopelessly for?

He steps out of the shadow.

He steps into the light.

The sunlight is a palpable thing, a blanket covering him.

But there is no pain.

There is only warmth.

There is only warmth.

There is warmth, and there is a hot sting — tears. 

He has not wept hot salt tears since the day he lost the man he loved in France. 

He did not weep for what he lost in London.

He weeps now for what he has been given.

He has been given back himself.

He stands on the hot stone paving of the courtyard of a villa in Tuscany, a midday sun pouring from a cloudless, dark-blue sky and tears run down his face.

“Arthur.”

There is wonder in his voice and an almost painful joy. “Arthur.”

He tips his head back to feel the sun on his face. The hat falls disregarded. 

No lover’s caress has ever felt like the touch of sunlight on his wet face. He reaches blindly for Arthur’s hand.

“Thank you.”

It is a paltry phrase, entirely inadequate to carry his gratitude, but it is all he has. “Thank you.”

Arthur leads him to two sun loungers. He lies back in one and lets the hot hot hot sunshine drench him and dry his tears.

He feels almost drugged by the light and heat. He drifts and the time unspools, thick and slow.

And yet too fast. 


	16. Joy

"I cannot weep."

"But you did."

They are still lying on the bed together.

"I did. For sheer joy. But I shouldn't be able to. My kind, we can't."

Eames is full of the maelstrom of emotions that overwhelmed him in the Tuscan sunshine.

"I was unharmed in sunlight. Arthur, it was everything I have yearned for." He reaches for Arthur's hand, presses his thumb to the needle hole, caresses the mark. The portal through which Arthur has given him this precious gift.

"I think in the dream you're not what you are here. You are your true self in a dream."

"Is everyone?"

"I don't know. Perhaps we are. Maybe we've never noticed, because we've never dreamed with someone who has a hidden true nature."

If only they could live forever in Arthur's dream. But they cannot; they don't even know if they can safely visit it again, and no way to find out that might not fatally imperil Arthur. 

He may never feel sunlight on his skin again.

"Eames, we'll find a way. I'll find a way. I'll research. There are people I can ask."

"Your dream-thieving world obviously exists outside the law, but I can't see how you are going to ask that: Is there a way for my …" He trails off. He has never named what he is out loud to Arthur. And they have never named what they are, together. He hates the one name, and hesitates to claim a status Arthur may not want to use in relation to Eames.

"I'd have to be circumspect."

It seems Arthur is also not ready to use either of those words. 

He props himself on an elbow and looks down at Eames. "I know a lot of clever people. And I'm owed a lot of favours," he says.

Eames' eyes are drawn to the mark on his throat, ugly with the print of his teeth.

Arthur's thumb beneath his jaw forces him to raise his eyes. "Look at me _,"_ he says. "We'll figure it out, Eames." His voice is implacable. "I'm _very_ good at what I do."

Eames nods, looking into Arthur's nightdark eyes. "I trust you," he says. Can he trust himself, though? Trust himself not to overthrow all his careful restraint and self-denial should the temptation become too great? He isn't brave enough to voice that.

*

They fall into an odd rhythm: Arthur begins to sleep in daylight with him, under the covers, protected from Eames’ chill. When they are awake, in the dark, Arthur orders food, and works on his computer, researching, sending feelers out to people in his underworld who may know things useful to them. Eames reads, or watches him work, sometimes sketching him: the way he frowns at his screen, the way his hands fly across the keyboard, emphatic, the way a lock of his hair falls into his eyes, the way the fine muscles in his arms flex, the way his fingers drift unconsciously to the mark on his throat, not covered by a stiff buttoned collar, but revealed by the soft frayed edge of the t-shirts he wears at home. At home.

They go out walking.

“Show me more of your favourite parts of the city,” Arthur said to him, so Eames does. The hidden squares and forgotten alleys, the soft dark secret spaces of parks at nighttime. The lights. His beloved Circus, on a rainy evening when the colours are doubled, tripled, fracturing into a million pinpoints. He watches Arthur look, and even if he can’t feel the full impact of what the lights mean to Eames, he sees him understand. “I listened,” he said after the first dream, after all.

They talk. 

About their pasts: his own childhood so distant it must seem to Arthur like another world. The grey and brown of the dull town he lived in, fatherless; the way the monotony was relieved by the colours of the countryside he escaped to as often as he was able. How he found pleasure in drawing — trees and stones and people and dogs. How he was lucky, so very lucky, his talent was noticed and encouraged. The London he fled to, looking for other men who felt as he did, if they existed. The terrifying, delicious shock of finding them. Arthur nods. He knows that too. They are not so different: boys from small dull narrow places who wondered if they were unlike everyone else.

Arthur tells how he made the choice to become a soldier (no choice for Eames) even though he knew it would mean suppressing part of himself. The things he enjoyed: honing his body to be a perfect machine that would do whatever he told it to, the discipline over himself that filled a need even as submitting to others’ orders chafed.

And they both tell about the snatched moments of tenderness that felt all the sweeter for being illicit. Eames says a name he has not said aloud to anyone since 1940 — George Mackenzie, with his beautiful hands and his shy smile and his soft mouth — and he tells how he didn’t return from a recce one day when the spring sunshine was particularly lovely, even amid the chaos of that terrifying time in France when it felt the whole army and England itself were on the run. How Eames had to swallow his agony, pretend he was merely sorry, and never let on that he was almost destroyed.

“I was already dead before I met that man in that bar on that ghastly night, you see, Arthur.”

And now I am not. But he doesn’t say that. It is too soon for declarations, although everything Arthur is doing seems like a declaration. 

He goes out alone one day, and when he returns, he hands Eames a smallish heavy box. Inside, two whisky tumblers. Eames understands. “A glass would be better.” It is better.

“Why don’t you find this revolting?” he asks, when Arthur squirts his blood from the syringe into one of the glasses and hands it to Eames, pouring a shot of Laphroaig into the other and raising it in a toast, watching Eames intently as they both sip.

Arthur shrugs. “I share blood with colleagues, remember. It’s kind of clinical, with the PASIV, but that’s what it is, ultimately.”

“I suppose so. I’m not sure I’d be so understanding, if our positions were reversed.”

Arthur just smiles, and chases a drop of whisky on his lip.

They kiss, Arthur capturing Eames’ wrists and holding them in a loose grip, a facsimile of binding, enough to give him a frisson, a remembrance of less escapable restraints. But although he wants Arthur’s hands everywhere on his skin, he doesn’t ask. He wants Arthur’s warm hands. He wants his hands to be warm on Arthur’s skin. He can wait. So, it seems, can Arthur.

*

“I think there may be a way for us to dream longer together,” Arthur says, looking up from his computer. “I’ve been asking around discreetly and there’s this guy who’s been doing interesting things with Somnacin, tweaking the compound, adding other drugs, making the dream deeper. Longer in the dream, without spending too much real time on the PASIV. Only problem is that he’s in East Africa. I wonder if he’d come here.”

“You’re a globe-trotting bunch, aren’t you? I’ve hardly been anywhere. Other than France. And Tuscany.”

Arthur smiles. He knows what Eames means.

“I suppose we are. We go where people will pay for our services. This Kenya guy is a bit of an outlier. Seems to be doing different things, almost like therapy.”

“How do you mean?”

“He doesn’t seem to do extractions — thieving — like we do. He’s running some sort of clinic where people go to enter very deep dreams.”

“What if he won't come here?”

“I’d go there, I guess. He’s our best hope. The only other way to have a really long dream, that would feel like days, months, years even, is to spend hours or days on the PASIV.”

“And we can’t do that,” says Eames, and then: “You’d do that, travel all that way, just to see this man you don’t know, who might be able to help us?”

Arthur has been sitting at the table, turned towards Eames on the sofa, now he gets up and comes over, sits next to him. “Of course I would. How could I not do whatever it takes, after seeing you in the sunlight?”

He can’t weep here, but the recent memory of hot tears is very strong. He picks up Arthur’s hand, where the mark of the needle has not yet faded, and raises it to his lips. “I don’t deserve you,” he says, against his warm skin and strong tendons.

“We found each other when we needed each other,” says Arthur. “And if anything, I don’t deserve you. I’m a criminal; you’ve done everything you can to do as little harm as possible. You have fought against every compulsion.”

*

The man in Kenya, the chemist, Arthur calls him, is amenable to a trip to London, paid for by Arthur. “I’ll visit some old varsity haunts,” he writes.

“What have you told him, about me? About us?”

“Nothing specific. I said a colleague and I are interested in deeper dreams, I’d heard he was the expert. He was flattered. He’s off in a backwater doing really interesting research, swimming against the tide of commercial dreamshare. He knows I’m connected to Dom, and Dom’s got a pretty big reputation, even after what happened with Mal. Maybe he hopes to get closer to the centre by coming here and collaborating with me and my colleague.”

“Your colleague, eh? You know I don’t understand any of this?”

“Bullshit. You might not understand the specifics of dreamshare, but you understand people, what motivates them.”

Eames shrugs. “I suppose I do. But what _will_ you tell him, about me? Your mysterious colleague who doesn’t go out in the daytime?”

“He runs a dream clinic. He drugs people so they can sink into their deepest subconscious. I doubt he’ll be fazed by someone who keeps odd hours, Eames.”

“We can arrange to meet him at a bar. People are remarkably apt to see what I want them to see. I just don’t have to do it anymore.”

“Do you miss it?”

“Stalking them? No, of course not.”

“No, I didn’t mean that. But going out, meeting people, new faces.”

“I don’t miss that either. I was so sick of only ever having the tedious getting-to-know-you small talk, nothing more. Always meeting, never knowing.”

"It's been a long time for me, too. Mal was the last person I got to know really well." A shadow passes across his face. They both know what it's like to lose someone you love. 

Arthur hasn't said what might have made her do what she did, if he knows. Eames hasn't probed, Arthur will tell him if he needs to. If it would help. 

Now there is nothing left to do except wait for this dream-chemist, this mysterious Yusuf. 

How long in the sun will his drug buy them? How long will Eames be himself — able to give Arthur what he has not been able to give anyone for such a very long time? It will be like a rebirth, like a first time. The thought of placing himself in Arthur’s masterful hands lights a bright-hot flame of desire. And will Arthur, even though restraints will no longer be necessary for Eames, share that with him, his carefully wrapped ropes, tied with beautiful knots?

He asks in the dark: “Will you have your Japanese ropes in a dream?”

“If you want that.”

“I think it should be as you want. But I do want that.”

“I do want it too, Eames. Staying with you, tracking down this chemist, has already given me a kind of calm. Control over my own destiny. But I do want the kind of calm I get from practising _Kinbaku_. It has been a long time since I had it. And you have already given me so much trust, I feel it will be—” he pauses, as if choosing his words carefully, “—profound. I hope for you too.”

“Yes,” says Eames, his mind looping back to how it feels when Arthur binds him simply with his silk tie.

The arrangements are made, the chemist will arrive tomorrow. 

Eames suggests as their meeting place a small, quiet bar he likes. Arthur orders them both a Scotch as they wait. Soon he might enjoy more than just the taste on his mouth. It has been difficult to manage his expectations, to school his wanting, to simply wait for whatever they will have, rather than hope too much. Hope is not something he has had much of.

The man who arrives at the appointed time does not look as Eames thought he might. Curly hair, soft clothes, friendly, open face. He extends his hand. There is ice in Eames’ glass, perhaps he will not notice. Arthur noticed, but Eames has come to understand that Arthur notices everything. And that he was particularly attuned to Eames. As Eames was to him. Yusuf may not notice.

“Great to finally meet you, Arthur,” he says.

“Oh?”

“Everyone has heard of you, and Dominic Cobb. And Mallorie.” A shadow crosses his face.

“Forgive me,” he says. “And you are Eames? I’ve not heard of you, but I’m stuck off in Africa. Are you new to the game?”

“You could say that.” Eames hears a quiet huff of a laugh from Arthur. He sits back to listen as Arthur discusses what they hope to be able to do.

“The way I formulate Somnacin gives you far more time in the dream. There are risks, of course, but it increases the time in the dream remarkably.”

“Yes, I gathered from that paper you wrote. But you were coy with the details.”

Yusuf smiles, easy and a bit sly. “Can’t just give my secrets away. But it’s a sedative. A _powerful_ sedative.” He rolls the word off his tongue with relish. Eames likes him — his soft hippyish looks obviously hide a sharp mind. In another world they could be friends.

“That would make coming out of the dream much harder,” says Arthur.

“Yes, there are risks. You should have someone keeping watch while you’re under. And it’s really not a good idea to get injured.”

Arthur finds Eames’ hand under the table. “We’re not planning anything dangerous.”

“Good. Because—” he almost shudders “— limbo is a risk. You don’t want to die in a sedated dream.”

“No.”

Eames is at sea — no idea what they are talking about. But he trusts Arthur.

The shadow Eames saw at the mention of Mallorie is back. “It’s safer than what the Cobbs were doing, I think,” Yusuf says.

“But you don’t know,” says Arthur.

“No one does. They’re your friends, how much do you know?”

“Not everything.” There’s a note of finality, a warning, in his tone.

“Well, as I say, I think my formulation is safer. But take care. Hope your mark’s not dangerous.”

“No, nothing like that,” Arthur says, smiling, but with that same hint of steely warning.

Yusuf smiles, unabashed. “You’ll have to tell me how it goes. For my records. My research.”

“Sure, of course.” Arthur smiles too, and orders another round, and moves the conversation away.

They agree to meet again the next night to actually get the drug from him. Arthur glances at Eames, eyebrow raised in a question. “At home?”

It feels strange to invite this pleasant stranger into his home. 

“Yes,” he says. “Not the sort of thing one does in public.” Arthur’s hand tightens on his.

They set a time in mid-evening. Late enough so they have time for Arthur to give Eames his blood beforehand, Arthur tells Eames afterwards.

“You know his blood doesn’t tempt me, don’t you?”

“Yes. But we may wish to dream later.”

_So soon?_

Wishing for something you have no expectation of is less hard than waiting for something you have been promised, even if the wait is not long.

*

When they wake the next evening, he says: “Will you let me help you, with the blood? You needn’t fear—”

“I don’t. It’s you. You don’t trust yourself.”

Eames tilts his head, agreeing. “I didn’t. But now I know I have no need to take, when you give. I like your restraints, very much, but I want to do this. And you will restrain me another time.” A shiver of anticipation shakes his spine and pools low, in the basin of his hips, at the thought of Arthur’s ropes biting into his warm flesh, in the Tuscan villa.

“I have to kiss you, Eames,” Arthur says, straddling him, capturing his hands, holding him down. He bends low over him and kisses him hard, his mouth demanding, his tongue hot. 

Eames wants, so much.

Soon, he can have it all. He has allowed hope in.

When Arthur releases him and gets off the bed, Eames watches as he fetches the plastic box that contains the syringe and then the glasses and lays everything out neatly on the small table. They sit next to each other on the bed and Arthur lays his hand, palm up, on Eames’ thigh. He’s wearing a t-shirt, so there’s no sleeve to roll up — a pity. Eames picks up the elastic strap and wraps it round Arthur’s bicep, the muscle firm under his fingers. Arthur makes a fist, opens and closes his hand to make a vein easier to find, a faint blue thread under the tender skin of his inner elbow. Eames has watched him slide the needle home with practised ease, but he is not certain he can do it without hurting Arthur and his hand shakes a little. Arthur’s hand folds around his, warm and confident. “You’ll do fine,” he says, and Eames manages to slip the needle into the vein. Arthur winces, and then he smiles. Eames pulls the plunger back and the big syringe fills up with Arthur’s blood, warm in his hand as he withdraws the needle. Arthur presses a finger over the tiny hole as Eames reaches for the glass and releases the hot red liquid into it, the scent thick. He sets it down and finds the sticking plaster to cover the wound. But first, he drops his mouth to the spot. The hole is tiny, already closing, he brushes his mouth over it, no more.

He pours Scotch into Arthur’s glass and hands it to him before picking up his own. He raises it. “Thank you. For everything. Everything you give me.”

Arthur just nods, smiling, utterly serious, and watches as Eames drinks his blood. He leans forward when he lowers the glass, and brushes his thumb across Eames’ mouth, slick with the last of it. “I want you so much, Eames.” 

Eames nods. “In the dream, can we ...?”

“Can we? Fuck, Eames …”

“Fuck?” He can’t keep the smile out of his voice. And then he is serious again. “I’m sorry I’ve been making you wait. I didn’t want to risk … I never have. And once I realised that in the dream I am … myself, I didn’t want … I want to be myself with you. You may have to be patient. It’s been a long time.”

“I think I understood why you wanted to wait. Not completely, but enough. And I’m good at self-control. I can wait.”

Eames leans against Arthur, Arthur leans against Eames. They wait together. All too soon, it’s almost the time they agreed with Yusuf. 

“We should get dressed.”

“Mmm, I guess.”

Eames runs a bath and afterwards, he watches Arthur knot a dark red tie at his throat. A different red from the one that lies neatly coiled by the bed. His hand rises to smooth his collar, fingers resting on the hidden place where the mark of Eames’ teeth has almost completely faded. Where he will make a new mark, in just a few hours, and step into sunshine.

And then Yusuf is there, smiling, glancing around Eames’ shabby flat, curious, but not insultingly so. He has accepted Eames for who he and Arthur presented him as: someone new to dreamshare, important to Arthur. He is, as Arthur promised, unfazed. Eames supposes if you live outside the law as they do, you learn to value people for their skills without judging other things about them.

He accepts a drink and takes a bottle out of a bag he’s carrying. The colour of the liquid is not the same as that which Arthur has. 

“I’ve been tweaking it for years,” he says. “The added sedative gives you much longer in the dream, about three times as long. And it’s stable, so if you need even longer, you can go down another level, as long as you have a PASIV there. And then it gets really long, exponentially so.”

“A dream within a dream? Ingenious. And you still wake when the timer runs out?”

“You wake from the second level back in the first level. And then from the main dream back wherever you started.”

“Elegant. We look forward to it.”

“But remember I said you really should have someone topside, just to be safe. You’ll be very heavily under. And be careful down there. The sedation makes it more dangerous. You really don’t want to get hurt. Or die. It’s not suitable for the kind of work you and Cobb do.”

“Oh no, nothing like that,” Arthur says, with a glance at Eames. “More similar to what you do in your clinic.”

Yusuf looks amused. “Don’t know if I’d call it that, but I suppose my clients are working through their issues. I don’t ask. I just formulate the Somnacin and supply the PASIVs. And we monitor them while they’re under.”

Arthur gets up and goes over to the table where his computer is. “I can transfer the payment now,” he says, typing something. “The sum we agreed?”

“More than fair. Considering I got a trip to London out of it as well.”

“My pleasure. We hope you enjoy your time here. If you’ll just enter your account details for me,” he says, standing up and stepping back to Eames, as Yusuf types on the computer.

As he stands up he says: “You have someone you trust to monitor you?”

“Yes, of course. Thanks.”

“Well, let me know how it goes. And if you need anything while I’m still here, just give me a call.”

As they close the door after him, Eames says: “He seemed pretty insistent about the monitoring. But we can’t have anyone. Are you sure, Arthur?”

“Yes. We’ll be ok. He’s a scientist, naturally more cautious. And he’s running whatever he calls his not-clinic, of course he has people monitoring his clients.”

“Alright. Can we go now?” He doesn’t want to wait anymore.

“Yes.”

They set the PASIV up in the bedroom again. 

“How long shall I set? Three times longer than in a normal dream, so each minute will give us about half an hour.”

He is greedy, so greedy. For the sunshine, for Arthur, for time. Time with Arthur, to do at least some of what they have spoken about. But they still don’t know enough about the other variable: his effect on Arthur. If they are as heavily sedated as Yusuf implied, will he even drink much at all?

Arthur turns the timer dial. “Ten minutes? That’ll give us about five hours. Long enough not to be rushed.”

 _Five hours? Five beautiful hours._

Anticipation shakes him, more intense than before.

“If you think that’s safe.”

He should be the one making that decision, counselling caution. But he has been so cautious for so long; now he is greedy. He wants. How he _wants_.

“It’s so long since you took from me, surely it’ll be safe.”

“Yes. Probably.”

Arthur has already poured Somnacin into the dose chamber. He takes off his tie and undoes his shirt’s top buttons. He inserts the awful needle into the back of his hand, presses the button and leans back, pushing his collar aside. Eames places his mouth on the hot beating pulse in this throat and bites.

——

They are standing in the sunny courtyard, the stone flags hot underfoot, the sky a cloudless dark blue overhead. He tips his head back to feel the heat on his face, the way it beats against his closed eyelids.

But he wants more than sunshine. The sun will still shine later. He opens his eyes and looks at Arthur, so beautiful in his soft clothes, dazzling white. He reaches for him. Arthur comes, and presses against him, a hand on the back of his head. His own hand finds that familiar spot on his throat, where the skin is smooth and unbroken over his pulsebeat. He dips his head and places his mouth there. Arthur allows it, and then he raises Eames’ face and says, fierce: “Kiss me, Eames, please god kiss me.”

He could drown in kissing Arthur, kissing him and knowing he is not mastering himself not to flinch from Eames’chill, that his hands can move over Arthur’s skin without raising gooseflesh, that he need not fear his need, for it is hot and urgent, but not uncontrollable. There is no animal in his chest, but only his heart, pounding so hard it is almost sickening to focus on, so he does not, focusing instead on Arthur, his mouth, his hands, his hard body pushing against Eames’. And that draws his attention back to his own body, responding to Arthur’s. A groan rattles from his throat: “Arrrthuuur.”

Arthur’s hand moves from the back of his head, finds Eames’ hand. “Come inside, Eames. Let me take you to bed.”

He leads Eames from the hot sunshine onto the shaded veranda, and so into the house. It is a house designed to stay cool: thick stone walls, shuttered windows, tiled floors. Arthur takes him into a room with a huge bed. Here the shutters are thrown back, the windows open, sunshine pours in, a bright stripe of it across the white sheets. Arthur has made this room perfect for him. He backs towards the bed, pulling Eames with him, then stopping, waiting for Eames to press him down on the mattress and climb up after him.

Arthur, dark hair and midnight eyes and tan skin, looks up at him from the white sheets and he is wearing too many clothes. Eames drops his fingers to the buttons on Arthur’s loose shirt. “May I?” Arthur laughs, and he undoes the buttons, not slowly — there will be other times for slow — and pushes the fabric from his chest and smooths his hands across his skin, his lovely skin. Another time he will discover every inch with his fingertips, kiss every inch until Arthur can hardly stand it, but not today. 

Today he moves quickly to unfasten Arthur’s trousers and tug them down — Arthur raises his hips — and push his underwear down too, and it’s not the first time he has seen Arthur's lovely body and his cock, hard, leaking, ready, but it is the first time he can touch — without fear! He presses his thumbs into the grooves of his hips, Arthur pushes up against him, groaning, and Eames does what he would not, in his other form.

He wraps his hand round Arthur’s cock, and bends over him and is almost overwhelmed by the scent of him, hot and sharp, and it is a scent he has been deprived off, the scent of sex, not of blood. It’s not Arthur’s London scent of wool-pomade-cologne-sweat and here he does not have the sharp senses that discern every nuance. His normal senses are flooded and he does something he has not done since Before — he touches his mouth to a hot, hard cock. He is overcome with want, with need. It is almost too much and he stills for a moment. Arthur’s hand pushes into his short hair and tugs gently. “Eames?” He lifts his face and meets Arthur’s eyes, the pupils huge, almost eclipsing their complex depths. He swallows, his mouth flooded, and lifts his hand to meet Arthur’s. “Eames.” Now it is a moan that goes straight to the base of his spine, and he lowers his mouth and slides it over the head of Arthur’s cock. It fills his mouth as it has not been filled all these long long empty years. He is filled, body and soul, with Arthur, with everything he is and everything he gives him. “Eames,” Arthur breathes, “Eames.” His hips twitch minutely. Restraint is something else he is giving Eames in this moment when he is almost too overwhelmed. He narrows his focus to the feel of Arthur’s cock in his mouth, its weight on his tongue, its texture under his lips stretched by its girth. He draws back, and returns, takes it deeper, moves his hand to meet his mouth and the two sensations — his mouth and his hand on Arthur’s beautiful skin — feed into each other and now he can let himself hear, the slick sound of his mouth, and Arthur’s gasps and loud breaths; and feel, his tremors under Eames’ hand on his hip and the tug of Arthur’s fingers tangled in his hair; and smell, the gorgeous hot scent of him. Then Arthur’s fingers tug more insistently, and he thrusts, his cock hitting the back of Eames’ palate and he pulls off, startled. “Sorry!” Arthur gasps and Eames’ hand on his cock slips easily in the wet there from his mouth and leaking from the slit and Arthur’s hips jerk, and Eames turns his wrist and Arthur lifts his head and Eames looks into his eyes at the moment he comes and he is more lovely than ever. “Eames …” His name is a sigh in Arthur’s mouth. He lowers his face and tastes the come pooled on Arthur’s stomach. And swallows, feels it slide down his throat _._

Arthur looks at him with languid eyes, his mouth soft, his breathing slowing as his cock softens. And now Eames is aware of his own body, of tension, of yearning, as if he is moving towards something. It’s something he has not felt, has not had, has convinced himself he did not want, ever since he was roughly taken that night after the bombs stopped falling on London. He is supposed to want it and take it, but he never has, has never wanted to.

Arthur, whom he trusts, and has allowed to know him a little, is the first person who has aroused in him this kind of desire, this want. Arthur’s hands are the first hands he has allowed to touch him. On the sofa after their first dream was the first time he has felt even a facsimile of sexual pleasure and release, since 1940.

Arthur has never seemed repulsed by Eames’ undead chill, but he made Arthur wait until the hands he placed on his body could be warm hands, the mouth he gave pleasure with could be a warm, living mouth. He made Arthur wait, and he also waited and now he wants his warm, living, once-again human body to feel the all pleasure that Arthur can give him.

He has not told Arthur all this, precisely, but Arthur always seems to understand much more than Eames says in words.

Arthur’s hand is gentle in his hair as they lie quiet, his head on Arthur’s hip, still breathing in the scent of sex.

“How can I give you as much pleasure as you have given me?”

“Your hands, you mouth, maybe just by looking at me.”

Arthur smiles. “We want the same things, then. Come up here?”

Eames gets up on his knees and crawls up the bed. Arthur kneels up too and unbuttons Eames’ shirt, efficiently, not drawing it out and out like before. He knows Eames couldn’t last. He pushes it off his shoulders and Eames shrugs out of it, lets it fall. Arthur’s hands are on the button of his trousers, there’s no belt to delay him. He lowers the zip, pushes them down his hips, and cups his hand over Eames’ aching cock. Eames’ body strains towards him, pushing into his warm hand. Arthur hooks both thumbs into the waistband of his pants and pulls them down, just enough to free his cock. He licks his lips, not a tease, a promise, a preparation.

“Lie down,” he says, “Let me get these off you so I can see you.”

Arthur has seen him naked, they have bathed together, but he feels more naked in this moment than he has ever felt. This is the first time Arthur has seen his body alive, full of blood pumped by a beating heart. He lies on his back, and Arthur straddles his thighs and strokes from his collarbones to his hips.

“You are so beautiful,” he says, fierce. “You are beautiful in London — yes, you are — but you are _breathtaking_ here, now.”

It’s Eames who forgets to breathe, forgets he has to, until his body reminds him, gulping a huge breath as Arthur’s hands rest on the skin of his chest, but they don’t linger, they move down. He spreads them, trying to span Eames’ waist, but his waist is wide; Arthur continues, he cups his palms over the bones of his hips; he shuffles backwards, to give himself room to put his hands on Eames’ cock. One long-fingered hand wraps round Eames’ cock and the other cups his balls. Arthur is reminding him of all the ways bodies can be given pleasure, ways Eames has forgotten. He braces his feet flat on the bed to support his arching spine as his body yearns towards Arthur, thrusting into the circle of his hand. And then his hands are gone, Eames raises himself on his elbows to see why. Arthur reaches into the tumbled bedclothes and picks up a plastic bottle and flicks the lid open with his thumb and upends it over his cupped palm and squirts clear viscous liquid into his hand. He drops the bottle and rubs his hands together and then his hands are back on Eames’ cock, his balls, and they are cool and slick and he tightens the circle of his fingers and Eames thrusts up into it again and again and again. Arthur strokes him and twists his wrist in a way that sends an extra bolt of pleasure up his spine, punching into the base of his skull, and he flops back on the bed, his neck arching, his spine bowing, his heels digging into the mattress, every sinew of his body taut as his climax slams through him.

And then his body seems reduced to a soft, almost liquid thing as if he will never move again and he is vaguely aware of Arthur’s mouth on his lower belly, licking. Arthur crawls up the bed and kisses him and he realises it is his come in Arthur’s mouth, from his living body. Tears run out of his eyes, hot on his skin, and then cooling and Arthur pulls back from his mouth, whispering as he goes: “My mouth next time.” His fingers, his thumbs are gentle on Eames’ face, wiping his tears as they flow uncontrolled, as his joy overflows.

In every dream, Arthur has given him back more and more of himself. This is a deeper joy even than the heat of sunshine on his skin — this other heat: the warmth of Arthur’s hands on him, his hot come, his scalding tears.

The heat of being _alive_.

At last, the flow of his tears dries and stops, and Arthur lies down next to him, his fingers on that place in his throat where his pulse beats, pushing his hot blood through his living body. 

He closes his eyes and drifts. 

“Can we live here forever?” 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I did think that this would be the final chapter, but there was too much I still want them to experience together. So, one more, I think.  
> And sorry I didn't post it on Friday, it was a tough one to get right.


	17. Bound

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am not a practitioner of Kinbaku. I do think it can be very beautiful. I apologise if I have failed to convey the experience properly, but I hope I reached some emotional truth, which is what I wanted to represent.

When they wake on the bed in London, in the dark, Eames is sure his eyes still feel gritty from tears, although Arthur has assured him that even injuries don’t make scars in not-dreams — he can’t think of where they are now as “real life”, what a sick joke.

In the dream Arthur bathed his eyes with a cool cloth, and then used the same cloth to clean his body as he lay on the white sheets with that stripe of hot white light painting his skin.

He doesn’t feel the cold, but he shivers here in the chilly dark.

“Thank you for those five hours,” he says. “It was beautiful. More than beautiful. I had forgotten. I made myself forget.”

Arthur’s eyes are sad.

“I’m just sorry I couldn’t give you longer there, give you more.”

“I hope we can go again. That it’s not too dangerous for you.”

“I feel fine, I think,” Arthur says, removing the needle from the back of his hand. So many holes in his flesh, all for Eames. But he sways as he stands up to begin packing the PASIV.

“Arthur!”

“I’m okay.” He sits back down on the bed.

“I took too much.” He can almost feel the heart he had in the dream banging in his chest. He stands up. “Lie down.” He tries to make Arthur lie back, pushing in his shoulder, remembering in time to put a hand behind his head. “Please lie down, Arthur.” His voice shakes.

Arthur looks up at him from the pillow, his hand wrapped round Eames’ wrist. “I shouldn’t have had a drink with Yusuf, as well as one with you, after giving you my blood. It was careless. I won’t be so careless again.”

“You need food.”

Arthur fed him in the dream: figs warm from the sun. His teeth sank into their fragrant soft flesh to their hidden pink hearts.

“I suppose so.” Is Arthur’s voice dreamy like it was when Eames took his blood in the street, have they overstepped the bounds of safety?

“Listen to me, Arthur. Do you feel … have we gone too far?”

Arthur frowns. “I don’t know. I really do think it was probably the Scotch. I guess I’ll know better after I eat, and sleep. Let me order some food.”

“A bloody steak. None of your sushi,” says Eames.

Arthur laughs, just a puff of breath from his nose. “Okay.”

He lies on the bed while he waits for his food, watching Eames pack up the PASIV. When there’s a knock on the door, Eames goes to take the order and pay for it. He sets the food on the table and sits with Arthur while he eats. He is indifferent to food in this form, but being in his real body has made him think about the pleasures of the flesh in ways he hasn’t allowed himself to.

Arthur does seem to have more colour in his face when he’s finished, but Eames takes him back to bed anyway. He lies down next to him, not tired himself, still energised by Arthur’s blood, and by all they did in the dream. 

If they can’t understand how to go back safely, he thinks he will be able to resist harming Arthur, but he’s not sure he could resist harming himself. The pain of not having again that which he has been given a terrible, sweet reminder of, would be too great. To have tasted something he had resigned himself to never having again, and then to lose it again would be unbearable. But he must trust Arthur to do all he can to give them as long as possible in the world he created for Eames.

He closes his eyes and lets himself drift into recalling the feel of Arthur’s hands on his skin, the feel of Arthur’s skin under his fingers, under his mouth, the taste of him, the sensation as he swallowed something other than blood; lets himself recall the intimacy, which he has had so little of in all his long years, both Before and After. He has always thought it was sunlight he missed most, but now he sees that it was not the heat of the sun, but the warmth of human closeness, that he yearned for.

The bedclothes shield Arthur from his chill, and deny him Arthur’s warmth, but he recalls it easily, especially how it felt against his own living skin warmed by hot blood. And he will enjoy its residue, when Arthur gets up and Eames slips beneath the sheets. For now, Arthur is deeply asleep, his mouth soft, the lines between his brows smoothed. He frowns less now, here with Eames, than he did when he was still with his friend. He has told Eames he feels calmer, more in control. If Eames’ willingness to submit to his restraints has contributed, he is glad. The promise he made Arthur, that he wants to experience the binding of his Japanese ropes, makes him tremble with the adrenaline of desire. He hopes it comes soon, if not there, then here. And why wait? Surely Arthur can obtain the ropes here? He almost wakes him up to tell him, but he restrains himself.

He stirs when Arthur wakes, having drifted into unconsciousness at last. The room is dark, but he knows it is light outside.

“Eames?” Arthur’s voice is still rough with sleep, intimately hushed. 

“How do you feel now?”

“Okay, I think. Bit hungover maybe. Perhaps I’ll go for a run, clear my head.”

When they argued, he told Arthur he wouldn’t be able to live Eames’ half life in the darkness, and yet he did while researching until he found Yusuf — lived in the dark to give Eames the light.

He gets up on one elbow, brushes the back of his fingers down Arthur’s cheek, his jaw, across the roughness of his stubble. “Go and get some light.”

Arthur leans into the touch. “Thank you,” he says, wrapping his hand around Eames’ wrist and tugging; Eames bends closer and Arthur lifts his head and they kiss. It is full of the memory of Arthur’s house of sunlight.

Arthur turns at the door, looking at Eames in the bed, surrounded by Arthur’s warmth. He has never seen Arthur dressed like this: his long legs bare in shorts, a thin vest revealing his throat, the fresh print of Eames’ teeth livid against the delicate skin. He looks younger.

“I won’t be long,” he says.

He wakes Eames when he sits on the bed, bringing the hot, damp scent of sweat — dirtier than in the dream. He is breathing hard, his skin gleaming. “I needed that.”

Eames wishes he would lean down and press him into the mattress.

But Arthur stands up. “I’m going to bath,” he says. “I stink.”

It’s probably too soon to say: “No, you don’t, I love it. Or, yes, you do, I love it,” so Eames lets him go and listens to the water running into the tub. 

“Eames?” Arthur calls from the bathroom, summoning him. He gets out of bed and walks through. “Bathe with me?” Arthur shifts forward in the bath and Eames gets in behind him. Arthur leans against him. “I promise you I’m okay,” he says.

“You would tell me?” He’s not sure if they could step back from the brink, or if they would only realise too late that they had gone too far. 

“Yes.”

It’s not a real reassurance. But there is something he wants to say, something he wants to ask for. Something important.

“Arthur, your ropes, can you get them here?”

Arthur moves away so he can turn and look at Eames.

“Yes, I can. Do you want that?”

“I do. I don’t want you to have to wait.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes. I don’t want to wait, either.”

Arthur smiles, happy, and perfectly serious. “Thank you.” He leans back against Eames, and turns his face, puts his hot mouth on the place in his throat where a pulse beat only hours ago, in their dream.

“Come out with me tonight.”

Arthur is towelling himself dry when Eames asks. He looks over his shoulder. “Are you asking me on a date?”

“We never went that other time.”

“No. Of course I will come out with you. Where would you like to go?”

“You choose. What do I know about restaurants.”

“Alright.”

Eames watches Arthur for clues on how he should dress. Arthur selects jeans that fit him shockingly well and a white shirt. The collar covers the mark on his throat, but he doesn’t button it. His jacket is from his charcoal suit, which Eames sees now is lined with deep red silk. Eames chooses all black, earning a nod of approval. 

Arthur doesn’t tell him where they’re going, but it’s soon obvious it's the river. They don’t stop under the trees and the string-of-pearls lights, though. 

“Later,” says Arthur, climbing the steps to the bridge instead. It’s busy with people heading to the theatres on the South Bank, and they join the crowds. Arthur leads him to a busy restaurant that seems to serve noodles. 

“Japanese?”

“Yes. Also very crowded. No one will notice that you don’t eat. Comfort food for me, but not uncomfortable for you, I hope.”

Arthur’s right, no one really notices him amid the noise and bustle. Later, they walk back across the bridge, pausing to look out over the dark water streaked with lights, down river to where St Paul’s stands serene among the thrusting new buildings. London has changed so much in the decades he has lived in it. And then they are under the trees and the lights where so many moments of terrifying revelation have passed between them in these short weeks that have upended both their lives.

“I’ll go and buy the ropes tomorrow,” says Arthur. “I know where to go.”

“Have you been thinking about it too, doing it here, not just … there?”

“Of course. I was prepared to wait — you said you would give it to me. But I won’t deny I have thought about doing it here. I’m sure we will be able to go back, Eames. I really do feel fine. I don’t feel that helpless drag that I felt after the second time. You have been so restrained. It’s like a gift you’ve given me.”

“We give each other things, I suppose. You give me what I need, so I want to do this for you. But not just for you.” 

Arthur reaches for his hand. Strolling hand-in-hand is not something he thought — Before — he would ever be able to do; and After, he never wanted to. But it feels right now.

*

In the daylight, Arthur goes out again, to buy the rope. Eames can’t sleep while he’s gone; he fetches his sketchbook and tries to capture the Arthur in his head, the Arthur in the dream: his hair disordered, his eyes hooded and languorous, his face flushed with ecstasy. The result is passable, perhaps one day he will have enough time in a dream to spend some of it sketching Arthur. Perhaps he could even paint him. Arthur has reawakened so many desires and long-suppressed passions.

He is not alone very long. Arthur returns with a discreet package. Eames almost trembles with anticipation.

“Would you like to see?”

“If you want to show me. Otherwise I can wait, until …”

“Until the time to use it?”

“Yes.”

“Eames, I find binding very beautiful, and doing it gives me a feeling of calm, of control, but I’m not interested in subjugation, only a willingness to participate, to give me your trust, to submit to the binding. I think you will like it — I hope you will — but I don’t want it to be a mysterious secret. Of course I will show you the rope.”

“Alright.” 

Eames sits down with Arthur on the sofa. Arthur opens the package and takes out several loose hanks of rope. It is a deep red, but otherwise it looks like ordinary rope.

“I usually use undyed rope, but this will look so beautiful against your skin, I couldn’t resist it. Would you like to feel it?”

Eames reaches out his hand, runs it lightly over the strands coiled in Arthur’s lap. It is not as rough as he would have thought, but it is rope, not a silken cord.

“I need to oil it,” says Arthur. “And it gets softer with use. It’s made of jute, it holds the knots beautifully. God, Eames, I can hardly wait.”

He lays his hand over Eames’ on the rope: pale skin and tan skin against the red.

“It’s the colour of your tie.”

“Yes, and I already know how exquisite that looks. You know I couldn’t resist it.” He raises Eames’ face with a thumb under his chin. “Thank you for wanting this.”

Eames nods. “I really do.”

Arthur reaches into the package again and gets out a small bottle and a cloth. He sets the rope aside and stands up, bending to pick up one of the hanks; he unties it and lets it unspool from his hand, a river of red. He unscrews the cap of the bottle and moistens the cloth, and then he draws the rope through his hand in a steady stream.

“Would you like me to show you what I will do? I can show you films if you want.”

“No.”

“Okay. I’ll start with a simple binding.”

Eames wonders how much it will hurt. How deeply will the red rope bite into his flesh? How long will Arthur keep him bound? He doesn’t ask. Part of the anticipation is the not-knowing. Arthur will tell him what he needs to know. He will be in Arthur’s hands. Watching the rope move through Arthur’s hands now is almost mesmerising. As he finishes each length, he re-ties it into a neat hank — there are five. It is hard to picture all of it wrapped around his body.

“Do you remember your safeword?” Arthur’s voice breaks in on his thoughts.

“River.”

“You have to tell me straight away if anything feels too uncomfortable. One of the ways to tell if a tie might be too tight, ordinarily, is if the skin starts to feel cool, but that won’t work with you, so you have to tell me. Promise, Eames, I’m very serious. I don’t want to hurt you.”

“I don’t think you could actually harm me.”

“Not here perhaps. But that’s not the point. You have to tell me.”

“Alright.”

At last, Arthur is finished. He sits down next to Eames again. “Tonight?” he asks.

“Yes, I don’t want to wait.”

“Neither do I. Have you been awake all day?”

“I was trying to draw you. I wasn’t satisfied.”

“Come sleep now, and then we’ll have a bath before.”

“You take very good care of me.”

“Of course. It’s part of my duty. But not just my duty.”

He stands up again and so does Eames. They go into the bedroom, where the sheets are still disordered. Arthur strips quickly down to his pants and gets under the covers. Eames lies down behind him. He closes his eyes and lets himself slip into daytime unconsciousness.

He wakes to the sensation of being alone in the bed. How soon he has become unused to aloneness. Water is running into the tub. He gets up and undresses before walking into the bathroom. Arthur is already naked. He steps into the bath and leans back: Eames must rest against him. Previously it has seemed natural that slender Arthur would lean against Eames, with his greater bulk, but Arthur up-ends every assumption. He lathers his hands and runs them down Eames’ body, up under his arms. He pushes his head gently forward and scoops water over his hair, washes that too. Eames has never felt so cared for, not even when he was a child. He is languid with the warmth of the water and the feel of Arthur’s hands on him, but anticipation is coiled tight in his chest. 

At last, Arthur says: “Stay in the bath a little longer, while I get everything ready.” He gets out and towels himself briskly, closing the door as he leaves the room. Eames tries not to wonder what he is doing. 

He steps back in after a short while. “Okay, I’m ready now.” He is wearing only tight black briefs. Eames steps out of the tub and dries off. “Just put on pants,” Arthur says as he finishes. Eames nods and follows him out. 

Arthur has spread a sheet on the rug in the sitting room and turned off all except one lamp. The hanks of rope lie on the sheet, stark against the white.

Arthur takes his hand. “Would you kneel down, please? I’ll be behind you. I am going to bind you with your arms at your back. Just relax and let me move you.”

Eames kneels down and Arthur steps behind him and kneels too. “I prefer not to talk much,” he says, “but that doesn't mean you may not speak. I’ll tell you what I want you to do. If anything feels bad you must tell me, okay?”

“Yes.”

“Good. Okay, put your arms behind your back.”

Eames complies, and Arthur moves his arms so they are bent at the elbows and crossed.

He flicks a rope out in front of them, and places his hand, holding the doubled length, on Eames’ chest. He reaches the other hand round his body and wraps the rope twice around his chest.

Eames can feel the warmth of his skin, and of his breath, as Arthur rests his face against Eames’ shoulder. The rope feels less stiff and coarse than he thought it might, but it is rope, not the smooth silk of his tie; it bites, gently. He can feel Arthur’s hands at his back now, and then the small, hard lump of a knot. The rope is pulled tighter, it is snug, not painful. “Is that okay?” Eames nods, and Arthur takes one hand in a loose grip, and Eames feels the rope being passed around his wrist and then around the other, and knotted, before Arthur flicks the rope out again and repeats the wrapping, further down his chest. He closes his eyes, so he can concentrate on the sensations: Arthur’s arms reaching around his body, his deft movements, neither fast nor slow, the way he manipulates Eames’ limbs with sure hands; his calm breathing, his hair faintly tickling his shoulder; the slight theatricality of the rope being thrown forward and the way Arthur grasps it cleanly and wraps it once more, knotting it again at his back and wrapping it around his waist. If he thinks about his own body, he is aware of the discomfort of kneeling on the floor, of the strain of having his arms bent behind himself. But if he relinguishes this awareness, what remains is a very real comfort of being in hands that hold him secure. Arthur ties another knot at his back and then stills with his face against Eames’ shoulder blade, his arms crossed over his chest. 

“I wish,” he says, voice very quiet, “I could show you how beautiful you are like this.”

Eames doesn’t say anything, but he nods.

He can feel Arthur’s heart beating steadily, marking time, but he doesn’t count its passing. At last, Arthur speaks again. “Thank you,” is all he says. He unties the knots methodically, not fast or slowly; the rope moves across Eames’ skin, faintly rough, and then the bindings are all loosed and the rope lies around them. And Arthur’s arms enfold him again.

Now Eames is aware of pain in his knees and his thighs from kneeling so long, but he doesn’t mind it. A very small price to pay.

Arthur stands up and steps in front of him, His face is more peaceful than Eames has seen it. He holds out both hands to help Eames to his feet, and leads him to the bedroom. He presses on his shoulders to make him sit on the bed, and fetches one of his own soft, worn t-shirts. It’s not necessary, Eames won’t feel cold, but it is such a tenderness that Eames is sure tears would run down his face, if they could. “Thank you,” he says, and he hopes Arthur knows he means for more than the shirt, which settles weightlessly on his skin.

“Come lie down with me now,” says Arthur, his voice still soft, and he lifts Eames’ feet onto the bed and settles him on his side. Then he goes round to the other side and gets in behind him, holding him close, his hand on the place where the first tie that bound him wrapped across his chest. He thought when Arthur washed him, that he could not feel more cared for, but he was wrong.

“I wonder if you understand what you gave me tonight,” Arthur says, his breath warm on the back of Eames’ neck. “It’s such a long time since I had anyone in my life to share it with.”

“I felt … cared for. Completely. In safe hands.”

“I’m glad. I felt, I feel, calmer than I have for months.” 

*

When he wakes, Eames feels as if he has slept, properly, not just slipped into blank unconsciousness. What they did yesterday floats in his mind like a remembered dream. Arthur is warm at his back, his arm lying across Eames’ waist. He wants to see him; he turns over. Arthur mutters but he does not wake. His hair is untidy across his forehead, he is no longer keeping it in the severely combed style he wore when they first met. _Does he always let it get longer and freer when he’s not working?_ In their dreams, it has been even longer. Arthur said people may appear as their true selves in dreams. It is an intriguing mix of relaxed and yet in control he is showing Eames. _Perhaps he controls himself so rigidly when he cannot control other things and other people as he wants to?_ There is so much he wants to know about Arthur.

Arthur opens his eyes and smiles. “Hello,” he says, smiling. “How do you feel today?”

“Rested.”

“Not sore?”

“I don’t think so. I was a little uncomfortable, kneeling, if I thought about it. But I didn’t think about it. There was so much else …”

“I am so glad it gave you what I hoped it would, that I saw you clearly enough to think it would meet a need in you too. You told me in so many ways.”

“It’s not something that’s easy to know about yourself. To understand.” 

“You know it doesn’t mean weakness or anything? That I don’t see you like that? I need something, and you need something complementary, and we fit together. You give me as much as I give you. More, probably.”

“I’m happy to give you what you need. Whenever you need it.”

“I hope I never exploit that.”

“I don’t think you could. I am in your debt for so much. For blood that I don’t have to steal. For dreams. For another place, where I am myself again.”

“I don’t like debts,” says Arthur, a shadow crossing his face, “but I don’t consider you indebted.”

Arthur has given them another way to be intimate that doesn’t rouse the dangerous animal he is afraid of in himself, but he wants to go back to the sunlit villa. There is more he wants from Arthur in that white-sheet bed; more he wants to give, acts he has forced himself not to think about. It is harder to push those thoughts down now he has had some of what he has denied himself.

And Arthur’s house has many rooms, he wants to see them, wants Arthur to show him, tell him about them, these products of his imagination.

He wants.

He wants so much.

“I also want to go back,” Arthur says.

“You read my thoughts. You read them often. Right from the beginning.”

“Do I? It’s not some occult skill, we’re just in tune, I guess. I’ve never felt so sure about someone I knew so little about. But I was certain. Even when I realised you weren’t like other men. I mean, in that one particular way. Of course you aren’t like other men.”

“I wish we knew, if it was safe.”

“We could try another 10 minutes. I know,” he says, when Eames frowns, “it’s not long enough.” 

“I want to live there. I do live there. I want to stay alive there. I want to learn all your house’s secrets, if you’ll let me.”

“Eames.” Arthur’s voice is so sad.

“Don’t be sad.”

“Of course I’m sad. I wish I could give you what you want. What you need.”

“You are the only person who has ever come close to giving me what I have been yearning for. You can’t be sad about that.”

“We could try the second dream.”

“I didn’t understand how that would work.”

“Well, time moves differently in dreams, as you know. Yusuf’s idea is that if you dream another PASIV, and use it to enter a dream while you are in the first dream, time in the second dream will run even more slowly. He says exponentially more slowly.”

“Has anyone you actually know ever done something like that?”

A shadow crosses Arthur’s face. “Not exactly.”

There’s something Arthur is keeping from him, but he won’t pry. Something about his friend, Mal, and his other friend, Dom, perhaps. Arthur will tell him if he wants to, if he can.

“But I don’t doubt Yusuf. I looked into him, his reputation is solid, it’s just in a different area than I’m used to. His drug would be useful on more difficult jobs, actually.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, if you were trying to find out something the mark would hide more carefully than a simple trade secret. If it was something more personal, for instance.”

“Why would you want to steal something like that? Someone’s thoughts.”

“You’re right, of course. You’re the moral one. I’m just a criminal, Eames.”

“Nonsense.”

Arthur just smiles.

“But would you like to try the two-level dream? You would have to be the dreamer, for the second one.”

“Why? How could I, I know nothing about making up a place.”

“I’m already creating the first place, in my mind, I can’t hold two places separately. I can teach you how to do it. It’s not all that difficult. When we create a dreamspace in my line of work, it’s trickier, because it has to be a place the mark will feel comfortable in, so that usually means somewhere they know. That takes research. And it also has to be … paradoxical. There have to be escape routes, or places where the laws of physics don’t quite apply. But you can dream anywhere you want to spend time. A memory, or a fantasy. It doesn't even have to be realistic. Anywhere you dream will be fine.” 

Eames is frowning, he can’t help it. He hasn’t had to do anything other than exist for decades. He has seen society changing around him, but he hasn’t kept up, and now Arthur expects him to just invent a new world. He has to trust in Arthur’s trust in him. It is not easy. He has trusted Arthur with so much, but he’s still not sure if he can trust himself. What option do they have, though?

“Alright,” he says. “I’ll try to learn.”

Arthur smiles his fully dimpled unguarded smile, and reaches out a hand, folds it round the back of Eames’ neck and drags him into a kiss: fierce, demanding — full of promise.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yes, I know, it's the story that doesn't want to end. Again, I didn't want to try to cram too much into one chapter, and keep readers waiting even longer. I think the chapter I'm writing is the last, but I guess I won't make any promises, which is why the final chapter count is now unknown.


	18. Tighter

He is impatient to go back to Arthur’s villa; so is Arthur, but they must wait.

Arthur explains the PASIV more thoroughly. “I can dream it,” he says, “and set it up. We will be connected normally, of course.”

“Our blood circulating together. Mixing?”

“Yes.”

His chest tightens at the thought. His blood, mixed with Arthur’s. Arthur giving him blood in a different way. What Arthur does with his machine isn’t normal, by the standards of anyone else, but he’s getting used to it.

“How long did it take you to get used to it?” he asks, “When they showed it to you in the military?”

Their experiences of being in the military were very different, he knows. When Eames joined up, it all seemed rather amateur, as if most of them, and even some of the brass, didn’t really know what they were doing. The chaos in France as they were pushed back to the coast, as they were rescued by so many civilians, certainly seemed the work of men who didn’t quite have a full grip on the situation. Things got better, he thinks. It seemed so, to an outside view anyway. Arthur, on the other hand, joined a highly organised professional military machine, and then got posted to its most secretive branch and experimented on with a fantastical machine. 

“They didn’t really explain it before they hooked us up, said it would be easier to experience than to understand.”

Eames tips his head in acknowledgement: he knows that feeling. 

“They didn’t start the war games straight away, of course. It seemed pretty tame at first. Then they told us to shoot each other. That goes against the grain.” He shudders at the memory. “They told us how it worked, that dying in a dream didn’t mean anything.”

“But it must. Even if it’s not real. You still experience it, don’t you.”

“Yes. It was horrible. And it was awful shooting a member of your own team.”

“But you got used to it?”

“Not completely. You get better at not thinking about it. And the way we use it, we don’t shoot our team members.” There’s a complicated look in his eyes as he says this. “Well, that’s not completely true. Sometimes you need to get out of a dream in a hurry, something goes wrong, or the mark seems to realise that it’s all a bit off. Then what we call projections, of the mark’s subconscious mind, can turn on us.”

“Other people, in the dream?”

“They seem like other people, but they’re not really, just parts of our personalities—”

“But we have been alone. Why is that?”

“I don’t really know. There are probably my projections in the background at my house, but I kept them away, I was focused on you, I didn’t want anyone else to disturb us.”

“Nor I.”

“So what are they doing? In your house?”

“Looking after the place, I guess.” Arthur shrugs. “The kind of dream we share, it’s not something I have a lot of experience with, dreaming intimately with one other person.”

“How will I learn to do it?”

“You need to spend time before, thinking of the place you want to go, just try and imagine it in as much detail as you can. Somewhere you know well, where you feel comfortable. It can be somewhere from your memory, but you shouldn’t try to capture it exactly, you should add other elements, things that make it distinct. It can be dangerous if a dream seems too much like real life … it gets hard to tell the difference. Especially if we’re going to be there a long while.”

“I would never be confused, though. I would always know, because I’m only alive in one place. I feel my heart beating there.”

“God, Eames, I hope this deeper level dream gives you a long time.”

Eames nods, what more is there to say? He knows he won’t get what he really wants: a forever with Arthur, in which he lives and breathes and loves and grows old with him.

He takes out his sketchbook and tries to bring the place he’s thinking about alive in his mind. It is a long time since he was there. And he stopped going there in memory, it hurt too much.

Arthur reads a book while Eames draws. He makes quick sketches of him at the edge of the page, the way he pushes his hair off his face, his long fingers tangled in the dark strands, twisting. The way he looks up and smiles when he feels Eames’ eyes on him.

He must focus on the dream place, he wants it to be a good place for both of them, to have enough variety to hold Arthur’s interest. He spends more time on some of the rooms than on others. 

“Does it have to be a building, or, only a building?”

“No, it can be a whole city if you want. Perhaps not the first time.”

“No, I don’t need a city.” He does want more than just a house though.

*

They go out, in the dark, for Arthur to eat, and to walk under the lights.

And they stay in, with Arthur’s ropes.

The second time Arthur binds him, they both remain standing. Arthur starts with the rope passing around his chest, and then lower, but instead of his arms being secured behind him, they are bound at his sides. And when the first rope has wrapped him thrice, Arthur takes another and secures it in a complex pattern, cinching tighter, weaving it through the first rope, knotting it at his back, and then bringing it up over his shoulders. He can only see the pattern Arthur creates by looking down at his body. It is a beautiful pattern, like a cage, but the bars of this cage, by binding his body tightly, quiet his mind and let him exist purely in the moment, feeling the bonds, the delicate touch of Arthur’s hands as they wrap and tie, his quiet voice: “Are you okay? Not too tight?” _Tighter, hold me tighter._ And then no words, just the sound of Arthur’s breath. When all the knots are secure, he holds Eames, hands spread on his back, fingers pushed under the binding. They are of a height, he tips his forehead against Eames’ and they stand together for what could be a long time, or a short, time itself dissolves, and there is only Arthur.

And afterwards, when he takes him to bed, he rubs Eames’ skin where the ropes passed over it, where they dug in. “When we do this … there, the ropes will leave marks. I think they are beautiful too.” 

Impermanent scars. Reminders. Another reason to want to go there again soon.

*

When he thinks he has imagined in sufficient detail the place he wants to take Arthur, he asks him to teach him more about how he will dream it.

“It’s hard to explain, but you are an artist, you see vividly. Just think of the place as we start the dream, and we will be in it. And if it’s not perfect, it won’t matter. It might sort of blur at the edges—”

“Where I haven’t connected it to anywhere outside of the place itself?”

“Yes, but it won’t matter. We won’t need to leave.”

Arthur doesn’t mean they won’t leave ever. Not like Eames wishes. Because he knows that even if Arthur says he’s happy with Eames, it can’t last forever. The half life in the dark, dreaming for short periods, never long enough for Eames, but perhaps too long for Arthur. And Arthur might say he is happy to have stopped working, always on the run with Dom, but he will want to go on with his real life eventually. He doesn’t say this to Arthur, because last time he said it, it made Arthur angry, and sad. 

But he thinks it. It will end, and Arthur will leave. And what? Come back to visit, bring his PASIV and let Eames live again? Come back between jobs? Would Eames have to go out and take blood from strangers again? He doesn’t think he could bear it. But if it meant he could have Arthur sometimes, perhaps he would have to learn to exist like that again. The idea makes him angry, and sad.

Meeting Arthur is the best thing that has happened to Eames. But it is also the worst thing, because it makes everything that is not-Arthur all the harder.

They are trying to wait long enough before the next dream to minimise the risk to Arthur. It is hard to restrain themselves. Eames wants, so much. 

Arthur gives him blood. Eames is good at inserting the needle now, Arthur doesn’t flinch.

“Tonight,” Arthur says, as he disposes of the needle and cleans the syringe. Eames wants to kiss him, but he hesitates when the blood is fresh in his mouth. Arthur looks sidelong at him, tips his chin up, offering his throat, and Eames accepts the invitation. The mark of his teeth, repeated so many times, is an ugly scar; he soothes the flat of his tongue over it, feeling its texture. “I’m sorry to have made this on you,” he murmurs, his lips still over the place.

“I’m not.” Arthur’s voice buzzes beneath his skin, under Eames’ mouth.

“You can hide it under a collar.”

“Or not.”

Eames isn’t looking at Arthur, still speaking into his skin. “Don’t you wonder what people will think?”

“I don’t care.”

“You don’t care that they might think you’ve been … I don’t know, _claimed_ , somehow?”

Arthur’s hand is in Eames’ hair; he tugs on it now, tipping his head back, forcing him to look into Arthur’s eyes.

“ _Claimed?_ You didn’t coerce me. I knew what I was doing. No—” he cuts off Eames’ contradiction “—okay, maybe not the second time, but after that. Everyone thinks I’m so buttoned-up and risk-averse, ‘Arthur has no imagination, Arthur’s cautious, careful, precise’.”

“You want people to wonder who gave you this scar?” He traces his finger across it. 

Arthur’s fingers cover his. “Yes. To wonder and realise they don’t know everything about me.”

“I’m sure they don’t know everything about you.”

“No, of course they don’t. And now they’ll know that.”

Arthur’s talking as if he will soon return to the people who think they know everything about him. Of course he is.

“Yes, tonight,” he says, returning to a thought that is good, not painful. “Will you show me the rest of your house?”

“Of course. Where will you take me, I wonder?”

He is eager to see the rest of Arthur’s house. And to see his own place; to show it to Arthur. He is thrumming with anticipation and with the energy of Arthur’s blood. 

Arthur lifts the PASIV onto the bed and pours a dose of Yusuf’s drug into the chamber, turns the dial for ten minutes, then seems to debate with himself, and turns it a further five minutes. Eames’ anticipation ratchets higher. Exponentially longer in the second dream, Yusuf said. He wants to stay in Arthur’s dream at least long enough to see the house, feel the sunshine on his skin, but the sooner they enter the second level, the more time will spool out ahead of them. 

Arthur inserts the cannula into the back of his hand, presses the button on the PASIV, and leans back on the pillows; Eames’ teeth break his skin, biting into the mark.

—— 

They are in the courtyard. The sunshine is as hot as before, pouring down from a cloudless dark-blue sky. Eames tips his head back to let it bathe his face in its heat, then turns to Arthur, to bathe in his warmth, to share his own warmth, the heat of the blood he can feel pulsing through his body, pushed by the heart that thumps in his chest. 

“I need to kiss you,” he says, and Arthur says: “God, yes,” and pulls Eames into a fierce embrace, chest to chest, hips to hips, and their mouths find each other. 

When they finally break apart, Eames says: “Show me the whole house?”

“Okay.” Arthur takes his hand and leads him to the shaded veranda. “It’s not like a real house, there are only the rooms I want. I can add more if I want. Or if you want.”

In Eames’ chest, his heart feels too big. He has forgotten all the strange ways living bodies react. He nods, not sure he could speak.

The bedroom is filled with sunlight, as it was the time before, the sheets crisp and fresh. Through a door is a bathroom bigger than any he’s ever used, with an enormous tub and a separate shower. There’s a sitting room and a study, but no kitchen.

“I don’t cook,” says Arthur, shrugging. “I didn’t think of it, when I made this house for you.”

“I don’t cook either, I suppose. I did a bit. Long ago.”

“I can add a kitchen, for next time, if you want.”

“I don’t know. There are other ways to spend our time here.”

The look Arthur gives him is heated.

“But shall we go down another level? Get more time? Don’t you want that?”

“It might not be as good a place as this is.” Eames looks away from Arthur, suddenly afraid of disappointing him, even though Arthur has never given any sign that he does, or might.

“It’ll be your place.”

“You’ve been living at my place.” He’s prevaricating, he knows. It seems a big thing, showing Arthur the product of his imagination like this.

“Is your flat everything you want it to be? Or is it just how it was before?”

“I think you can guess the answer.”

Arthur nods. “I like your flat, you know. Please show me your dream place, Eames.” 

“Alright. Where’s the PASIV?”

“In the bedroom.” 

Eames follows him, and he opens a large armoire. Shirts and trousers are folded on the shelves, and in the bottom is a silver attache case just like the one lying on his bed in London. Arthur lifts it out and carries it to the bed. Eames sits and watches as he opens it and unspools two of the clear tubes. There is a bottle of the drug and Arthur carefully fills the chamber.

“How long will we be there?”

“It’s hard to say. Yusuf was a bit unspecific. We’ve got more than eight hours if we stayed here, and we’ve been here—” he glances at his watch “—half an hour. So say we set the timer for six hours, we’d still have some time back here before this timer runs down. But I really couldn’t say how long that will give us there. Quite a long time. Days, probably.”

“Days?” _Days to be alive._

“Yes, days.” Arthur stops what he’s doing and looks up at Eames, raises a hand to his face. Eames turns into the touch. His heart is beating so hard he’s certain Arthur must be able to hear it too. It’s making him feel a little sick. Arthur strokes his thumb down Eames’ cheekbone. It’s a steadying gesture.

Arthur fits needles into the tubes, and holds one out to Eames.

“Shall I insert it for you? You’re not used to needles.”

Eames lifts his hand to show Arthur how it is shaking, and Arthur takes it, and holds it, and slides the needle into a vein so smoothly that it hardly hurts. 

“Lie down,” he says, and inserts his own needle, and leans over the machine, his finger on the button. “Come,” he says, “let’s dream.”

“Alright. I just think of the place, picture it?”

“Yes, think of the place and us in it.” He presses the button and lies down next to Eames.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Is anyone still reading? Work continues to suck more time and emotional energy than is reasonable, but I haven't stopped writing, Arthur and Eames just keep having so many feelings!  
> I split a very unwieldy chapter into two to make this one, so I have a chunk already written and work is finally calming down, so I have hopes ... to complete this before there's a vaccine. 
> 
> Come and say hi in the comments, I love to hear from every single reader who ever says hello.


	19. Worth

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Another longer than planned wait, but a longer chapter will compensate, I hope.  
> Quite a lot happens in this chapter, emotionally.
> 
> Do come say hi in the comments, I love to hear from you.
> 
> And this time I think I can say with a fair degree of certainty that the next chapter is the last. I don't know when it will be finished. Quite a lot going on work-wise next week.

The light is English light, late afternoon light slanting through the window. How odd that it isn’t morning, a whole day of sunshine ahead of them. But he always loved the way the afternoon light fell into this room, loved the day winding down, the promise of evening: quiet conversation, a record playing, a drink in hand. A walk in the enfolding dark across the damp lawn, lamplight spilling from the open door, an owl hooting somewhere nearby. He has missed the light so much, but the soft gathering dark of a summer evening was always his favourite time in this favourite place.

Arthur looks around. “Where are we?”

“It’s the house of a friend I stayed with, the summer before the war.”

“Eames.” Arthur’s voice is so tender.

Eames steps over to the window and looks out. It’s like Arthur said it might be, the lawn dissolves into a haze. It doesn’t matter. He turns back to the room. Arthur is looking at a picture on the wall, a man seen in profile, reading in a deckchair, the greens and colours of a garden behind him.

“It’s you,” he says.

“He was a painter too, my friend.”

Arthur touches his painted face with a light finger.

“He captured you well.”

“He was a better painter than I. And he had more time for it.”

“Are there any of your paintings here?”

He didn’t include them all, when he imagined this place. Perhaps he will show Arthur another time. If there is another time. There is one in this room.

“That one’s mine, from that summer.”

Two young men lie on a rug, the head of one resting against the thigh of the other, tennis rackets abandoned on the grass. They are seen from a distance that makes their features indistinct, but they are inclined towards each other. 

“It’s lovely.”

He comes to stand with Arthur in front of the picture. He had almost forgotten it, but when he started thinking of this house, that summer, the picture came back to him. The idyll of that month, when everyone was waiting for what they knew would happen, if not when it would come. They knew, and they tried to forget, to put it far from their minds. So they played tennis, and drank cocktails in the dusk, and danced to records playing on the gramophone. And they painted each other, capturing a time and place that would soon be swept away and forgotten. The pictures have no doubt been stored in an attic, or sold in a junk shop. His certainly — no one has any reason to recall a man of some talent but too little time to let it develop. 

“It was a lovely summer. Cut short, but while it lasted, quite lovely.”

Arthur turns his back to the painting, looking fully at Eames.

“You were happy.”

“Yes, very.”

“Thank you for sharing it with me.”

“Would you like to see the rest? Shall we have a drink?”

“Yes. Let’s have a drink, then you can show me the rest. We have plenty of time. Time for everything.” Arthur’s eyes are full of promise that is answered in the tension in Eames’ gut.

“Martini? That’s what we were drinking here that summer.”

“And you didn’t drink the one I made you, the first time.”

“I didn’t know I could.”

“No, we didn't.”

There’s a tray on a table near the door: a bottle of gin, one of vermouth, a bucket of ice, a shaker. Eames mixes the cocktail and hands an icy glass to Arthur. He raises his, but he’s not sure what he should toast. Arthur raises his too, but he just smiles and takes a sip, shivering as he swallows.

“Excellent martini.”

“I was good at mixing them.”

“You haven’t lost your touch.”

“Would you like to see more?”

“Yes, show me everything.”

They carry their glasses with them as he opens the door into the hall, panelled in dark wood in the Arts and Crafts style, the wide staircase drenched in coloured light from the stained glass landing window. The front door is open to the garden, framed by a honeysuckle vine, its scent heavy in the soft air. At the top of the stairs, a wide gallery is flanked by closed doors. One door is open. The room’s walls are painted a soft pink, the curtains patterned with roses. A pretty room. The prettiest room he ever slept in. It reminded him then of his mother’s room, which he loved since childhood.

“This was my room.”

There’s a window seat. Leaning against it are an easel and a box of paints. Arthur crosses the room and looks out, through the creeper that threatens to come inside, that casts the room into a forest-glade dimness.

What is Arthur thinking about this house of memories? Is he seeing the parts of Eames that Eames wants him to see, the parts that even then, he could show in this house as nowhere else? What will he think of this Eames, the soft artist, the flower-loving pansy? That’s a word Arthur would never use, he knows. Is Arthur surprised to see this side of him, when the man he met was a world-weary card counter, used to bars and clubs and thieving by charm and even by force? A man sickened by his existence and very ready to risk all for another. A man who begged to be restrained with ropes. 

Arthur turns from the window and he is smiling at Eames.

“Only one of the others came back,” Eames can’t help saying. His memories of that summer are happy, but he has many losses to mourn. Strange to mourn for those who died, after they mourned your death.

Arthur takes the empty glass from Eames’ hand, sets both down on the chest at the side of the bed, steps very close, pushes his hand into Eames’ hair, and tips their foreheads together.

“Thank you for this lovely place. We will also be happy here, but you don’t have to hide … the dark things from me. If you don’t want to.”

“I wanted to bring you here because I felt more myself here than anywhere I’d ever been. And then it was gone and everything after that was dark.” He sees the face of George Mackenzie, so young and beautiful, and brave even when he was afraid, and adds: “Well, not everything was dark, but this was the last soft place.” 

They are both dressed in the clothes of that long-ago summer. Eames has remembered so much that he has not thought of for decades. It is bittersweet to see Arthur as if he was one of their happy few.

“I think there’s more, do you want to see it?”

Arthur leans back, his head tilted. “Do you? Maybe later.” His thumb rubs circles at the nape of Eames’ neck, strong and gentle, and his other hand slips down across his arse. Eames doesn’t want to leave this room either.

“Kiss me, Eames.”

Arthur’s mouth is warm, but not hot, because his own mouth is not cold; he pulls Eames even closer, his living body banishing thoughts of the dead, Eames’ living body responding eagerly. He lets himself be steered towards the bed and pushed down onto it and then Arthur is over him, pinning his hands above his head, pressing him into the soft eiderdown, leaning down to kiss him again, deeper than before. Every nerve in his body is singing; every vein, every artery, is full of his own blood. He is hot, and hard, and exquisitely sensitive and he wants more, more, _more._

Arthur breaks the kiss just enough to murmur: “My mouth,” straight into Eames’ mouth — a remembered promise. He’s too close to see, but Eames has to close his eyes anyway. 

“Eames? Is that what you want?”

“Yes, please. Yes.” 

Arthur sits up, and Eames looks up at him: his hair falling into his eyes, his mouth red and slick, swollen with kissing.

“Yes, your mouth. I want everything, anything.”

“You can have it all.” And Arthur leans down again and kisses him, but softly this time. And then he releases Eames’ hands, and starts to unbutton his shirt, his fingers slipping under the fabric, skimming across his skin, unfastening more buttons, tugging his shirt tails from his trousers, trying to push the garment off his shoulders. But Eames is wearing the braces of the era he is recalling. Arthur smiles — “I like suspenders” — and pushes them down, followed by the shirt. And since there’s no belt buckle to undo, his hands are at Eames’ old-fashioned fly — “More buttons” — and Eames grins at him and raises his hips so Arthur can pull his trousers down. “Fuck, shoes” — he gets up from where he’s kneeling astride Eames’ thighs and disappears into a crouch at his feet, pulling his shoes and socks off. He leaves Eames — his shirt open, his trousers halfway off — lying looking up at him and starts to strip off his own clothes. Eames has been thinking about doing that slowly, achingly slowly. Another time. There’ll be another time. Arthur is looking at him with such heat in his eyes as he reveals his body that it’s almost as if Eames is doing it himself. But it’s not a show, either. Arthur isn’t flirting with him, he’s saying without words: “This is me, this is what I am going to give you, this is how I will give you pleasure, here, I have nothing to hide from you.”

Arthur’s body is lovely as ever: lean, finely muscled, his skin golden, his cock hard and leaking. Eames’ cock, still trapped in his underwear, twitches in response. He swallows the saliva pooling in his mouth at the sight of him, at the memory of how he felt on Eames’ tongue, and he groans, “Arrrrthuuuur.”

Arthur smiles, warm and lazy, his eyes hooded. And then he’s back, hands on Eames’ skin, pushing his shirt off, pulling his trousers down, curling his fingers under the band of his underwear and easing them down. He jerks his chin, Eames scrambles backwards further onto the bed and Arthur follows on his knees until Eames is propped against the pillows, caged by Arthur’s body.

“My mouth,” he says, dragging the pad of his thumb across Eames’ mouth. 

Eames forgets he has to breathe, his heart thudding sickeningly in his chest. He nods, gasps for air, and Arthur tips his thumb across his crooked bottom teeth. “Not sharp,” he says. Eames nods, bites down against the nail. Arthur is smiling, entirely serious, as he pulls his thumb back, trailing it down Eames’ chin and down his neck. He tilts his head to give Arthur access. Arthur puts his mouth on the dip of his collar bones, drags it, licking, over his chest. He hums, the sensation skittering across Eames’ skin. 

Eames lifts his hands, places them on Arthur’s shoulders, slips the left into his hair, lightly cupping the back of his head. Arthur presses back against it briefly. Is he trying to throw Eames off? He lifts it away, but Arthur follows it, raising his mouth enough to say: “No” and then, clarifying, “Put it back.” So he does, and Arthur hums appreciation, brushing his mouth against a nipple. Eames arches under him and feels Arthur’s mouth curve into a smile before his teeth close delicately on his flesh and his tongue swirls around it. Eames moans and braces his feet on the bed, raising his hips, seeking contact, impatient for more. Arthur lifts his mouth away again, “Soon,” he murmurs, moving to Eames’ other nipple, biting gently, blowing a cool stream across the wetness to make Eames shiver. The sensation of cold is almost as novel and desirable as the feeling of warmth. So many new-old half-remembered sensations a living human body can experience.

Arthur continues his exploration of Eames’ torso, so agonisingly slow, when Eames’ cock is hard and aching to be touched. He whines, low in his throat, and feels Arthur’s mouth smiling against his skin again. “Patience,” he murmurs. Eames tips his head back against the pillows, arching his neck, rolling his shoulders, clutching at the covers, all but drumming his heels — trying to control his impatience. Arthur relents, half sits up, takes Eames’ cock in a firm, hot grip that almost jolts him off the bed. Their eyes meet: are his pupils as blown wide as Arthur’s? And then Arthur shuffles back, pushes Eames’ thighs up and apart, brushing the backs of his hands lightly across the sensitive skin, and bends low, reaching one hand up, searching for Eames’ hand. He gives it, and Arthur hums, and runs the flat of his tongue up the underside of Eames’ cock. His grip on Arthur’s hand is bone-crushing, the anchor he needs as Arthur slides his mouth down — hot and slick and wet and perfect — and back up, tongue swirling around the head. With the hand Eames isn’t crushing he cups Eames’ balls, fingertips brushing the skin behind them. Every muscle in Eames’ body is shaking, every nerve lit up; his breath is loud, ragged. Arthur takes him deeper, deeper, the head of his cock hitting the back of Arthur’s throat. His orgasm is building, building, building, coiling tighter, tighter, tighter, relentless, crashing through him, leaving him in shards, almost, in its wake. But Arthur is holding him together, his steady hands, his mouth still on Eames as his cock twitches and softens; just before it is too much, he pulls back, and tips his head back, looking up at Eames, his chin wet with saliva, his lips swollen, his smile satisfied. He wipes his mouth on the back of his hand and lays his head on Eames’ thigh and they drift together, Arthur gripping his knee, hand cupped over the ball of it. Eames is grateful for such an odd, comforting, unsexual touch; he couldn’t make his own hands work now, feels like a bird fallen from the sky, as if his limbs are fitted together wrong. And yet, he has never felt more right. Arthur has made him feel more at home in his body than he has since ... since forever. He has never had a more confident lover. He is in safe hands, just as he was when Arthur bound him with his knots and quieted his mind with the rightness of that surrender. He wishes he could say any of this, could tell Arthur how profoundly affected he is, but his voice won’t work and he lacks the words, so long out of practice. His hand in Arthur’s hair —heavy, hardly moving, — will have to say what he can’t.

Finally, he can say: “Arthur.” It’s a rasp: “Arthur.”

Arthur’s voice is almost as wrecked: “Eames.” And he didn’t just get taken apart completely.

“C’mere?” He wants to taste himself in Arthur’s mouth, and then he wants to take Arthur in his mouth again and taste him there, in all his hot human aliveness, without fear. He thinks he will never tire of putting his mouth on Arthur and feeling no need to sink his teeth into his flesh, to suck his blood-heavy cock, and not bite down.

Arthur crawls up over Eames, his lean body against Eames’ bulkier, pale torso, his hard cock rubbing across his belly, and Eames reaches up and pulls him down, fits their mouths together, Arthur’s swollen lips to his, and licks in and there it is, proof of how alive he is in this baffling not-real but somehow more real world he and Arthur have created together. It pulls a moan from deep inside his chest as Arthur rocks against his hips. 

“May I …?” he says, moving with Arthur.

“Whatever you … want … just … do it … now.” Arthur’s breath is coming short and his cock is leaking between them, his hips stuttering. Eames grips his biceps and turns him onto his back — Arthur’s eyes widen, Eames has been so careful not to use his unreal strength, but he doesn’t fear it here. Nor does Arthur. It’s just the normal strength of a big man, here.

Arthur looks up at him, eyes pupil-black, hair sticking to his sweaty skin, lovely mouth panting open, and Eames leans down and sucks a lover’s bruise into his salty-slick throat, nips at his collar bones, flicks his tongue across the hard nub of a nipple, making Arthur whine, closes his teeth on it — his teeth! And then he can’t anymore, can’t keep teasing and delaying, must get his mouth onto Arthur’s hot flesh, must feel his hot hardness inside himself, invading him. His brain stutters on that thought … another time, later … 

He kneels between Arthur’s legs, and pushes his thumbs down the grooves of Arthur’s defined muscles, and stills him. He takes Arthur’s cock in hand and brings his mouth to it. Slides down, inhaling Arthur’s clean musk, filled by him. Arthur’s fingers are in his hair, his hand a weight to push up against as he moves, caressing Arthur’s cock with his mouth: harder, softer, faster, slower — faster faster faster, harder, tighter. Arthur is thrusting into his mouth and he shifts his hands from his hips, doesn’t want to impede his movements, wants to feel utterly possessed. It’s perfect, Arthur thrusts a final, sharp jerk and floods Eames’ mouth … but then, even though he can swallow in this body, his throat, unused, convulses. He pulls away, snapping his head back, throwing Arthur’s hand off, only just managing to control his reflex. There is a lot this body must learn again. If only it would not keep betraying him in these moments.

Arthur sits up. “Fuck, Eames, are you …? I didn’t mean … I’m sorry. That was inconsiderate.”

But Eames is the one who should apologise. He waves Arthur off, mortified. He gets off the bed and leaves the room, looking for the bathroom. Is there a bathroom? There was of course, but did he think of it? It’s the third door he tries. 

He turns the tap on hard, and splashes water on his face. 

And then he looks up.

And sees himself in the mirror.

Sees himself in the mirror.

He has forgotten what he looks like. He doubts he has ever looked this wrecked: hair wild, mouth swollen, eyes … he can’t look into his eyes.

“Eames?” Arthur’s voice is soft. He is standing in the doorway. Eames looks over his shoulder, gestures at the mirror.

“Oh.”

“Yes. It’s …” He pushes a wet hand through his hair, trying to smooth it down, trying to make the man in the mirror look more like his memory of himself. “All these things I can do. Or not do.” He wants that to sound self-deprecating, but it just sounds bitter. And a bit sad.

“Eames, no. That was me. It was my fault. I wasn’t thinking.” He smiles. “I couldn’t think, actually.” He steps into the room, holds out his hand. “What do you want? What can I do? Will you come back to bed?”

Eames turns to face him. He looks as wrecked as Eames, but there’s a crease between his brows that shouldn’t be there.

“Alright,” he says, and follows Arthur back to the bedroom, waits while he turns down the bedclothes, and sits on the edge of the mattress. He feels limp with exhaustion, and emotion. Another new-old sensation. Up there, in London, he doesn’t often get tired, just gives in to unconsciousness. He turns to lie down, lifts his feet into the bed. Arthur goes round, gets in behind him, crowding close, folding himself round Eames, skin to skin, thighs against his arse, chest against his back, arm across his waist.

“Okay?”

“Yes.”

The light in the room slowly fades as the summer twilight deepens into night, there is no sound apart from their breaths: his rough, Arthur’s steady.

*

The room is almost light. There is a solid warmth pressed to his back, Arthur has turned over, no longer holding Eames, but still close. His body aches. He swallows, his throat aches. He is thirsty. He has slept and woken and he is still alive in a real body. The advancing dawn reveals the room of his imagination and memory. The pink walls, the worn rug, the rose-patterned eiderdown covering them. Clothes are scattered on the floor. There is a glass of water on the chest next to the bed. He is thirsty. He leans up on an elbow and reaches for the glass, cool under his fingers, and drinks. The water soothes his throat. 

Behind him, Arthur stirs, turns back over, pressing himself to Eames, body soft with sleep — and cock hard. Eames is caught between wanting to push back and ask without words for something he has been thinking about, and desiring, and needing to gain time, to get to know this newly alive, over-sensitive, unpredictable body. He flinches, body deciding for him, and Arthur wakes. 

“Eames?” And then: “Oh. Sorry.” He shifts away. 

Eames turns over. “I do want that. But I think I need time. To get used to—” it’s hard to find the right words “—being human.”

“Yes, of course you do. You will tell me if anything I do is too much?”

“River?”

“It doesn’t have to be that serious. But yes.”

“I’m not used to talking. About sex. One didn’t, really. Negotiate, discuss.” And then, to move away from intensity, he says: “Did you bring me the glass of water? Thank you.”

“You brought it yourself. You wanted it, so it was there. It’s very convenient.”

“Hmm. I miss doing, though. I would like a cup of tea, but I would like to make it. I wonder if I thought of the kitchen?”

“Do you want to go and see?”

They get up and dress quickly and go down the stairs and through the hall to where the kitchen was. Eames has remembered it, and there is tea in a caddy on a shelf and matches to light the gas. He fills the kettle and sets it to boil, and finds he is blinking tears from his eyes. It’s such a banal thing, but he hasn’t had to do anything so simple and comforting for so long. He hopes Arthur hasn’t seen. If he has, he gives Eames the privacy not to explain. He finds milk and sugar, and makes tea in the teapot they always used, plain and brown, solidly ordinary. 

Arthur is looking out of the window, over a field to a hazy woodland, when Eames hands him a cup. “I didn’t even ask how you take your tea,” he says. “Do you even drink tea?”

“Sure,” says Arthur. “Is there sugar?” He adds a spoon from the bowl.

Eames doesn’t even take a sip for a moment, content to bury his nose in the fragrant steam. 

“I’ve missed so much, there’s so much to miss, you wouldn’t think tea would be so important.”

“But it is.” Arthur isn’t asking a question.

Eames takes his first sip. It’s as he remembers it: strong and bitter, with enough milk and sugar to add comfort. The last cup of tea he had, Before, was in his flat, the day he went back to see the man from the bar, and was turned from real life. Forever, he thought.

This isn’t real life, here in this dream-memory with Arthur, but it is better than what he has endured for decades in London.

He sighs with pure pleasure.

“The tea was always good here.”

A few minutes pass, and then Eames says: “Waking up here, still here, was … I didn’t really believe I would. I think I half thought I’d wake up in London.”

“It’s unusual for me too,” says Arthur. “Normally we are in and out. A few hours, do the job and leave.” He frowns and then adds, quieter: “Dom and Mal, they started extending their private dreams. He has never told me exactly what was going on. But she—” he looks away from Eames, out of the window again “—she got confused, about what was real and what was a dream. I think that’s why …” He trails off, but it’s clear what he means.

“Arthur.” Eames isn’t sure what to say. Or what to think.

Arthur clears his throat. “But it’s different, what we’re doing. We haven’t left anyone behind, topside. They had kids, little kids. And we won’t get confused.”

“I knew you were taking a risk, doing this for me. But you didn’t tell me you knew how big the risk was. You didn’t tell me it was the dreams that … hurt your friend.”

Arthur still isn’t looking at him. “It’s different though,” he says, again. “I knew the risk, and I thought it was worth taking. I still think so. More, in fact.” He turns back to Eames. “You are worth the risk.”

“That’s a very dangerous thing to say.” He thought, right at the beginning, that Arthur was a dangerous, reckless man. And then Arthur convinced him it wasn’t recklessness, but confidence. Now he’s not so sure. It is a heavy burden to bear: that Arthur is taking a terrible risk, a known risk, for a man he met counting cards. Who isn’t even a man. There’s no risk to Eames. Whatever happens, he will be better off than he was.

“You have always terrified me, Arthur,” he says, looking into Arthur’s nightdark eyes. “Nothing about me warned you off. And now this.”

“I know what I want.”

“There should be a limit to what you are willing to give up.” Eames sets his cup down, the tea’s gone cold anyway. 

Arthur sighs. “We keep having the same argument. Why can’t you believe that you might be worth taking a risk for? I’m very good at calculating risk, and I’m not reckless, even though you seem to think I am.” His voice has taken on a hard edge, a warning tone.

The morning is so bright outside, in contrast to the darkness between them now. Eames wants to feel this soft English sun on his face. 

“I’m going for a walk,” he says, looking away from Arthur. 

He steps out of the kitchen door, straight into the field. In reality, there was a paved yard and an ugly coal shed. The grass is tall, still damp with dew, brushing against his trousers. The woods are an indistinct mass of green, but there is birdsong, and the scent of the crushed grass stalks. Odd what you remember. As he did in Arthur’s Tuscan courtyard, he tips his head back, letting the sun paint his face. It’s a softer sun here, but warm, even this early. 

Arthur has followed him, keeping a slight distance on the narrow path. It’s easier not to look at him, when he’s a mass of conflicting emotions — his joy at being here, at being in his real body, with all its pleasures and problems, is undercut now with his guilt at this new risk to Arthur, and the feeling that he cannot shake, of not being worthy of all these risks, no matter how often Arthur assures him he is. Eames really isn’t the confident-seeming card-counter who intrigued Arthur in the club, who surprised him on the river bank, who shocked him in his hotel room. That was all a sort of act, a way of surviving, of getting through his existence, that he had practised for so long it had begun to seem real. Here, where he is himself, there is no bravado. Even in London, in his flat with Arthur, he let that facade drop and revealed the part of himself that doesn’t want to control, but rather to cede control. And Arthur gave him that, it is only with Arthur that he can be naked; that he can be honest. As little as he is used to talking about his emotions, he must. They must.

They have walked all the way across the field and he can see now that the trees in the wood are not really there, but suggested, as in a painting.

“That’s cool,” says Arthur behind him, “Never seen that kind of dream-edge before.” His light tone makes it obvious he’s trying to move past their difficulty; Eames knows they can’t let it go so easily, but he accepts the offer, for now. 

The edge is palpable, but insubstantial. Eames puts his hand through it, there’s no “there” there. Unsettling. Like so much else.

“It would probably recede if you were here a while, and thought about what lies beyond. You could push it back,” says Arthur, putting his hand through as well. “There’s so much we don’t know. Dreamthieving really only scratches the surface.”

Eames withdraws his hand from the void at the edge of his imagination and turns to look at Arthur again.

“I’m sorry,” he says. “Sorry I keep disbelieving you. Will you let me try to explain?”

“Of course I will, Eames. I know this is difficult for you. I can’t even begin to imagine how strange your life has been.”

“Life,” says Eames, bitter, “I don’t call it that.”

“That’s what I mean. I think we both have unusual … circumstances that affect the way we see ourselves. Distort it, maybe.” He lifts his hand, ghosts the back of his fingers down Eames’ face. Eames turns into the touch and nods.

“Yes. Shall we go back to the house?”

There are two deckchairs on the lawn.

“Let’s not go inside,” says Arthur, sitting in one. “I also need the sun.” He leans back and closes his eyes. 

Eames takes the other chair, but he keeps looking at Arthur. It’s difficult to start. “I know you hate that I think you are reckless.” That’s not the main problem, but it’s a way to get to what he really needs to say. 

Arthur opens his eyes. “Eames—”

“May I explain?”

“Yes. Sorry.”

“I believe you when you say you understand risk, that you are careful. But it is hard to believe I am worth risking your sanity, maybe even your life, for.” Arthur looks as if he wants to contradict him, but he pushes on. “I have been something loathsome for so long. Meeting you, knowing you, learning from you … I feel very lucky, but I don’t deserve it.”

“You don’t have to be perfect to be loved, Eames. No one has to. But how can you say you have been loathsome? You have done everything possible to minimise the damage someone like you could do. Always. And in everything between us, you have put my safety above your needs, even above your desires.”

Eames’ mind snags on the word ‘loved’, but it’s too much to process, so he pushes it aside for now. 

“Of course I did. I had to. I tried so hard to leave you be, but I couldn’t. I couldn’t follow my own rule. Never ever see someone twice. Never get to know anyone. The least I could do was try to make sure you didn’t pay the price for my selfishness.”

“Selfishness? I’m glad you broke your rule. No one should be that alone. But don’t you see how much you gave me?”

“I gave you difficulty and fear. I had to keep pushing you away. I couldn’t give you what you—” he’s about to say ‘deserve’ “—need.”

“What do I need that you didn’t give me?”

“You know what! I couldn’t even kiss you without danger. We had to be so careful! I don’t know how you could even bear to touch me, let alone kiss me.”

“Surely the fact that I kissed you every chance I got should be enough to convince you that I don’t find you anything other than entirely compelling, here or there!”

Eames opens his mouth to protest, but Arthur carries on: “I’ll tell you what you gave me. You saw _me,_ you saw someone other than the efficient manager most others see. You saw someone worth looking at, and drawing, and confessing secrets to. You saw so much of me, that I could tell you something I don’t easily tell. And then you joined me in that. You allowed me — no, you asked me — to bind you. You seemed to understand why it was important to me. You seemed to get from it what I hoped you would. You gave me your _trust,_ Eames. Why can’t you believe me when I tell you that to me, you are worth it? Worth whatever risk there might be.” He stops, and looks away, blinking, and then he looks back at Eames, and reaches out his hand. Eames takes it, and Arthur says, very soft, voice breaking: “That to me, you are worth loving. That I love you.”

Eames just stares at him. It’s hard to believe, but that’s what this whole conversation has been about. 

“I’ve been in love with you since the river. I’m sorry I doubted you. That wasn’t you, it was all me. I was so stupid. You have saved me, and not just when … you know when. You save me every day.”

He slips from the deckchair so he’s kneeling in front of Arthur. “It’s not easy, believing, about myself, but I will try.”

“Okay.” Arthur’s hand cups the side of his face, and he leans forward and kisses Eames, softly at first, and then with more force, his hand slipping to the back of Eames’ head to hold him in place. “Believe it,” he whispers, fierce, pulling back just far enough. “I’ll keep reminding you.”

Eames nods.

Kneeling like this casts his mind back to his first time with Arthur’s ropes. How peaceful he felt: his mind quieted, his doubts falling away, in the moment at least.

“Would you bind me?”

“Right now? No. That might tangle it up with all these difficult feelings. But later, of course. We both need it, I think.”

“Yes, alright. I can wait.”

“But I’ll take you to bed now.”

Eames gets to his feet, and holds a hand out for Arthur. They walk into the house together and up to the pink bedroom.

Eames wants to undress Arthur, but this probably isn’t the time. He waits for Arthur to take the lead. 

“Will you let me take care of you?”

“Anything you want.” What is between them feels delicate, a bit fragile, in need of care. Eames is the one who caused the trouble, but he doesn’t know how to repair it, so he defers to Arthur.

“Thank you. I would like to give you a massage.”

“I’ve never …”

“I thought maybe not.”

“It wasn’t something one did, then.”

Arthur smiles. “I think you’ll like it. I will.”

“Alright. What must I do?”

“Strip to your underwear, and lie face down on the bed.”

Arthur pulls the bedclothes back while Eames undresses. He lies down and turns his face to see what Arthur will do. Arthur strips to his pants as well, and picks up a small bottle from the night table. He climbs onto the bed and straddles Eames’ hips. When he places his hands on Eames’ skin they are slippery with oil. He doesn’t speak as he begins to sweep them from Eames’ shoulders, down his back, and back up, digging in to where tension is knotting his muscles. Eames closes his eyes. He has never been touched like this. Yet another new experience under Arthur’s hands.

At last, when Eames is almost in a trance, Arthur begins to speak — slowly, softly. 

“I’ve wanted to do this for ages. I love your body, I love touching you. I love touching you sexually, touching you sensually, touching you when I bind you. I’ve wanted to touch you like this as well. You aren’t used to this, I know. I want you to understand how much this means to me, that you are willing to accept this. I love everything about your body. The power in your shoulders, the delicacy of your hands, the strength of your thighs. You have given me such pleasure with your body, and we are only just beginning to understand each other. I have so much to learn about you. God, Eames, I want all the time we can get, however we get it.”

Eames almost can’t form thoughts, lulled by the steady sweeping of Arthur’s hands, the rich scent of the oil, his quiet voice. But the thoughts he does form swirl around the word ‘love’. Arthur’s not saying, as he said before: “I love you”, but it’s so long since anyone used the word in relation to Eames that it’s almost as astonishing. He hopes he can put into words later what he feels. For now, all he can utter is a sigh, a moan of pleasure, Arthur’s name as a moan of pleasure.

That seems enough for Arthur, because he says, as his hands still: “I’m glad we understand each other now.” He lies down next to Eames and pulls the covers up, even though it’s still daytime. Eames is ready to rest. Being human is exhausting. 

Eames turns over to face Arthur. “Thank you,” he says. “You are so good at saying what you mean. I have not been good enough at hearing.”

The room is dim when he wakes, the summer dusk soft outside the windows: His favourite time of day. They are still lying face to face, Arthur looks younger in sleep, without the tensions and pressures of his real life and his strange job. Eames reaches out and traces a finger along his jaw. “Darling,” he whispers. He has not yet said what Arthur said to him yesterday. Saying he has been in love with Arthur since that night by the river was not the same as saying as plainly as Arthur did: ‘I love you.’

Arthur opens his eyes and Eames tells him: “I love you” before he has a chance to hesitate. Arthur smiles.

Eames’ heart crashes in his chest. He has never said that to anyone.

Arthur wraps his hand around Eames’ wrist, and closes the small distance between them and kisses him.

*

Afterwards they settle into a rhythm — sleeping and waking, drinking tea, eating food they dream up as the mood strikes. They walk in the garden, and laze in the deckchairs in the sun that always shines, far more than in a real English summer. 

“It’s like a holiday,” says Arthur. “I haven't had one for a while.” He looks up from the book he’s reading, his face soft, bronzed by the sun.

“The time I remembered when I dreamt this was a time out of time. A retreat from reality. I think we knew we would need the memories. But after a while, for me, they were too painful. I knew I could never have anything like that again.” A shadow passes over Arthur’s face, so Eames hurries on: “But here we are.”

It won’t last, but he won’t think about what comes next.

Later that day, as dusk deepens into night and bats flit about the garden, Arthur says: “If there was a way to live in a dream for much longer, you’d take it, wouldn’t you?”

If he’d been told, before Arthur, that there was a way to escape his real existence into another state, equally solitary, but not subject to the same compulsions and restrictions, he'd have said yes without hesitation. To exist without stalking for blood, to exist in the light — he would have taken that. But after knowing Arthur, that would be giving up something far more precious: the warmth of intimacy, the chance to allow another to see him in all his messy contradictions.

“Not alone. I’d rather have your company sometimes, and still exist in London, than live here alone forever.”

“No, not alone,” says Arthur. “I have an idea, but I need to research it topside. Maybe I shouldn’t have mentioned it. Will you trust me with it?”

What choice does he have, after their argument and what came out of it? Arthur values trust above all else.

“Yes.”

Arthur’s mention of topside brings back in full force the truth that this dream will soon end.

“How will we know when this dream is ending?”

“It’s hard to say. I don’t have a clear idea of how time is stretching here.”

They have been here days.

“When we work we use music. We set it to start playing just before the timer runs down. You can hear it, faintly, in the dream. It’s a cue. I should have thought of that.”

Eames knows what song he would have chosen. One they danced to that last summer. He wasn’t in love with any of the men he shared that idyll with, but they danced in each other’s arms. And later, hearing it on the wireless one night, he looked at George across a crowded room and wished the world was different.

“Next time,” he says, and Arthur smiles.

“Next time.”

There is so much he wants while they are here, but there might not be time. 

Arthur has not brought out his ropes, although he agreed to bind Eames. The tension of waiting without asking is ever-present, a knot pulling tighter in the pit of his stomach, both terrible and delicious. He wants to feel the binding in this body that can truly experience pain. He wants to see the red marks imprinted on his skin, pressed into it. He wants his mind to give up its last doubts and float free.

Now, as the night becomes fully dark, Arthur says: “You haven’t said, but have you been waiting?”

“Yes, I have.” The knot tightens further.

“So have I.” And further.

“Come, then.”

As they walk along the gallery towards the rose room, Arthur says: “An empty space would be best. Can you do that?”

Eames nods, and opens a door. The light is soft, as Arthur made it in London, and the space is bare. “Thank you. I can do the rest. Will you wait in the bedroom until I’m ready?” Arthur says. “Don’t get undressed,” he adds, sending a frisson down Eames’ spine.

Eames leaves the room. He sits on the bed and waits to be summoned.

“Eames?” Arthur’s quiet voice calls him back and he stands and follows him.

The room is no longer an echoing shell. The floor is covered in smooth matting apparently made of straw that gleams in the low light. One of the walls is a sheet of mirror. In the middle of the room lie several coils of rope: some red, some black, some uncoloured. 

“I want to show you how beautiful you are. I never could before.”

Eames looks at them standing together. It is still uncomfortable to see himself.

“Alright,” he says. “I’m in your hands.”

Arthur smiles, completely serious. He lifts his hands to Eames’ shoulders, drags them across his collar bones and down to the first button on his shirt. “May I?”

He nods, and Arthur undoes the buttons. He lowers Eames’ braces, his mouth quirking up, and pushes his shirt open, slipping his hands under the fabric, lifting it away and down his arms until it drops to the floor. Then he kneels down and unties the laces of his shoes, raising each foot from the floor in turn and taking them off, and his socks. He stands up and smooths his hands down Eames’ arms, circling his wrists with his long fingers, squeezing lightly. Eames’ breath catches, ragged in his throat, and Arthur nods. “Yes,” he says, moving his hands to the fastening of Eames’ trousers. He slides the hooks open and starts on the buttons.

“It needn’t be sexual,” Arthur said when he bound Eames with his tie, what feels like a long time ago, and it hasn’t been, before. But this time, the heat between them is different. Eames is different. His blood is hot and he is already halfway hard. Arthur slips his hand into his open fly and palms Eames’ cock through his underwear. He hums and his eyes flick up to lock with Eames’.

“Is that …?” Eames isn’t sure what he wants to ask. Is it okay? Will his arousal get in the way of what Arthur wants?

“How patient can you be?”

“Very, I think.” Eames can hear the tremor in his voice, can Arthur?

“Well, you know it’s not mostly about sex, for me. But it can be.”

Eames swallows. “Okay.”

His trousers slide to the floor and he steps out of them. He has turned away from the mirror, but Arthur turns them back, so he’s looking straight at himself, and at Arthur, behind his shoulder. 

“Will you kneel, please?”

Eames complies. The contrast in their positions — Arthur standing fully clothed behind him — ratchets his arousal higher. But Arthur bends to pick up his clothes and set them aside, and then starts to undress himself, keeping his eyes locked with Eames’ as he does so. When he is clad only in his black briefs, he comes to kneel behind Eames.

“It will be very different for you, here. It will be more uncomfortable. You know what it feels like mentally, but not really physically, I think. I will be very careful, but you have to take responsibility too. You must not let me bind you tighter than you can bear. You must tell me to stop.”

“River.”

“Yes. Promise me, Eames. Just because we’ve done this before, doesn’t mean you have to push yourself too far.”

“I want the marks.”

“I know.”

“But I’ll be careful.”

“Good.” Arthur cups Eames’ jaw, his thumb brushing across his mouth.

And then he reaches for a rope. Black.

He unties the hank and lets it fall from his hand, flicking it out and bringing the doubled centre point up to Eames’ chest. He rests his hand there briefly and then pulls it around behind him, the rough fibres dragging across his skin, lighting a fire in every nerve. Eames closes his eyes to focus on feeling it.

“I’m going to bind your chest and arms like last time.” Eames tries not to be disappointed. “And then I would like to bind your legs.” He will be immobilised. The knot of anticipation had begun to loosen; now it tightens again. “If you can bear it.” Arthur’s breath caresses his ear, his voice intimately soft as he ties the first knot against Eames’ spine and cinches it. Tight but not uncomfortable. He slips fingers beneath the rope, checking the bind, and Eames shivers at the combination of touches. Arthur leads the rope lower, and around his chest again, his hand and then the rope lightly brushing across Eames’ nipples — he sucks in a startled breath but Arthur doesn’t pause. Arthur ties another knot at his spine, and cinches it tighter, so that he can feel it begin to bite gently into his skin. “Eames? Is that okay? Not too tight?”

Eames shakes his head. 

“Say it, please.”

“No, not too tight.” His breath is shallow.

“Eames?”

He takes a deeper breath, feels his chest expand within the ropes. “I forgot to breathe. But I can.”

“Okay. Two more, and then the arm binding.” Arthur passes the rope around his ribcage, around his arms, just above his elbows, tightens his knot, and again round his waist. When he has tied the last knot he sinks down from his own kneeling posture and pulls Eames down with him with an arm around his waist, until he is sitting on Arthur’s thighs, the knots pressing into his spine, his arse pressed against Arthur. His arousal had begun to subside, now it returns.

Arthur rests his cheek against Eames’ shoulder He has not looked at himself until now. The black bars of the rope are stark against his skin, pale except where it is suffused with a flush that washes down his chest. It is so different to see his body as another does, instead of looking down at it. He’s still not used to it. 

Arthur’s head is bowed against his back, giving Eames the privacy to regard himself. 

“Do you see how beautiful you are?”

“It is beautiful.”

Arthur’s sigh is almost silent, a puff of breath against Eames’ skin.

After another moment, Arthur says: “You remember we stand for the next tie.” 

Eames gets awkwardly to his feet. Arthur bends and picks up another hank of rope, deep red like the ones in London. 

The second tie weaves around the bars that cross his chest, between his body and his arms, so each pass of the rope across his arms becomes a bracelet of sorts, and the whole cage tightens, holding him in an ever closer embrace. Arthur bites his lip as he manipulates the rope, looking up into Eames’ face after cinching each knot, testing by slipping a finger under the cord. He takes Eames’ hand. “Warm,” he says. “Good. Are you okay?”

Eames nods, but he knows he has to speak. His voice sounds as if it comes from a long way off: “Yes. Thank you.”

Arthur smiles. A half. Over Arthur’s shoulder, he can see himself in the mirror. His eyes are hooded, blissful.

When the last knot is firm, Arthur stands behind him again and Eames can see the whole structure encasing his body: precise, clever, beautiful. Like the man who made it. Arthur wraps an arm around his chest, the other around his waist and Eames lets his eyes fall shut again, so he can concentrate on the binding digging into his flesh, the knots pressing against his bones. On Arthur’s warmth, the sound of their breaths in unison, the scent of the rope, the oil used to treat it, the straw of the mats. On the tang of sweat and the fainter tang of arousal, largely faded. A deep calm washes through him. And Arthur isn’t finished yet.

After a long moment unmoored from time, Arthur says: “Do you still want the rest?”

“Please.”

“Okay. I’m just going to step over there, fetch that chair.” A plain kitchen chair stands against the wall. Eames didn’t notice it before. Next to it is a glass of water. Arthur brings both over. “Please sit down,” he says, and holds the glass up to Eames’ mouth so he can drink. He stops before it is gone; Arthur nods, and finishes the water. “Thank you,” he says, putting it down and picking up a hank of undyed rope. 

He kneels next to the chair. “I’m going to bind your legs from above your knees to your ankles. If you are uncomfortable at any time, you know how to stop me. I don’t just mean physically. It takes deep trust to agree to be immobilised. Just agreeing is a profound gift. I won’t think less of you if you want to stop before the end.”

“I understand.”

Arthur puts his hand, holding the folded middle of the rope, on Eames’ thigh just above his knee. For a moment, he just rests it there, then he reaches around and brings the rope up, and through the loop, pulling it through, and cinching it firm. Next, he moves the knot to the back of Eames’ legs and starts to weave a complex pattern of knots or loops down the front of his legs, holding the rope as it wraps around and around, binding them together. 

A shudder of discomfort starts in his chest as Arthur weaves the rope lower. He is completely immobilised. The way his arms are bound to his torso means he could not reach the final knot around his legs to undo it. Arthur could go away and leave him here, a prisoner. He doesn’t think he would do that. In fact, he is certain he would not. But he can’t deny the feeling. Arthur is kneeling, head bowed, focused on the final stages of the binding.

He could push through. He has faced worse fear in his life, both Before, and After. He looks up, seeing himself in the mirror. He can still see the beauty of the binding around his torso, but he can also see his face. The calm that washed through him during the first binding has drained away.

“Arthur.”

Arthur looks up. “Are you—?”

“River.” He shakes his head.

Arthur drops the ends of the rope and holds up his empty hands. “Okay. Stopping. I can cut you out, or untie you.”

“Don’t cut your rope.” But his voice shakes.

Arthur reaches behind himself and picks up a large pair of scissors.

“I’m cutting, Eames. Hang on.” 

He puts one hand on Eames’ thigh, and slips the point of the scissors under the rope around his knees, and cuts, and cuts the next round and the next, never taking his hand off Eames’ skin. Eames takes a deep breath as the last loop falls away.

“I’m sorry,” he says, “I thought I could—”

“You have _nothing_ to apologise for. I pushed you too far.”

He is still kneeling, one hand on Eames’ thigh, the other holding the scissors, his head bowed. “Let me cut the rest.”

“What? No, not the chest ones. I’m fine with those.” It’s true, now that he could stand up and leave. The embrace of the black rope is still comforting.

“If you’re sure? I’ll undo them then.” He stands up.

Eames tries to stand too, but hasn’t the strength in his knees.

“God, Eames, I’m so sorry.” There’s a thread of panic in Arthur’s voice.

“Arthur. I’m fine now. Come here, please.” He has no way to reach Arthur, to physically compel him. Arthur takes a breath. “Come sit.” Arthur frowns; Eames nods at his lap. “Come, please.” There’s a struggle in Arthur’s eyes. “Let me take care of you, please, Arthur.”

Arthur nods, and sits and leans sideways against Eames. The ropes dig into his skin under Arthur’s weight, but it isn’t very uncomfortable.

“I got too absorbed in the tie.” His voice is tired.

“It was beautiful. I know I had nothing to fear, but …” He trails off, unsure how to explain.

“I’m so sorry.”

“Don’t be. It will be different next time.”

“You would try again?”

“Of course.”

“Eames.” His name is a sigh in Arthur’s mouth.

He closes his eyes and lets time drift slowly. 

——— 

When he opens them, they are on the white bed in the Tuscan villa.


	20. Never enough

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am sorry I have taken so long with this -- in my defence, it is long itself!  
> And I know I have said this before several times, but this time it's true, there is only one more chapter. And I have started writing it.  
> Please come and tell me what you think, or just say hi!

“Are you okay, Eames?” 

“Yes. But no marks. That’s a pity.”

He wanted the marks, tangible proof of Arthur’s care, not that he needs it; tangible evidence of the blood in his veins, because it is still astonishing that in dreams he is whole again. Next time, he told Arthur. Next time, he will submit to all of the bindings. He will believe that Arthur would not abandon him.

“I messed up.”

“No. I know you wouldn’t go away and leave me tied up, but I suppose some part of my brain didn’t believe it.”

“It was too soon. I thought … I didn’t think carefully enough about the effect on you. I thought the tie would look beautiful, and I find it very meditative to do, it has a calm rhythm.” 

“Yes, I can see that.”

“And the end of the dream caught us by surprise, which was stupid of me. We must have a music cue next time.”

“Hush, Arthur. We’re fine, no harm done.”

Arthur’s still scowling as he sits up and removes the needle from the back of his hand, disposing of it and reaching for Eames’ hand to take his out. A bead of blood oozes up, and Arthur sucks it away, his eyes locked on Eames’.

The light in the room is different: slanting, the day is starting to decline here. It will be over soon and they will be back in London, in his dim and dingy flat, cold and cut off from the light again. 

Never enough time.

No matter how long they can have in dreams, if it ends, it will never be enough.

“I’d like to sit in the sun a bit, while I still can.”

“Yes, of course.”

Arthur packs the PASIV efficiently and stows it back in the armoire and they go out into the courtyard. Eames tips his face up to feel the hot southern sun in his skin. They lie in the loungers.

“It’s never going to be long enough,” Arthur says. Eames turns his head to look at him. “For you, for us, it’s never going to be enough time.”

“No.”

“Remember I told you I had an idea? Will you trust me, and believe what I told you, that to me you are worth taking really big risks? ”

“I trust you. I’m trying to be alright with you taking those kinds of risks.”

“Good.” Arthur settles back and closes his eyes. 

The sun’s heat is wonderful, but it’s not actually the heat that Eames wants. It’s not the heat he really misses, now that he’s had another. He gets up and crouches by Arthur’s chair, touches the back of his fingers to his cheek. “Arthur?”

“Mmmm?”

“How much time do we have left here?”

Arthur opens his eyes and looks at his watch. “An hour and a quarter. Why?”

Eames leans in and kisses him, a hand on the back of his head. Arthur deepens the kiss, his mouth opening to Eames, welcoming him, arching up from the chair, reaching blindly for Eames’ hand and pulling back just enough to whisper: “Take me to bed.”

Which answers the question Eames had been about to ask. He stands and pulls Arthur to his feet, leading him into the dim, cool house, and into the light-filled bedroom.

He has been wanting to undress Arthur, now he will not be denied. Pity he’s only wearing a loose shirt and linen trousers — maybe a good thing though, they don’t have hours. Arthur stands next to the bed, waiting for Eames, reading his thoughts again. He puts his hands on Arthur’s shoulders, sweeps them down his arms, and back up to his throat, alluringly framed by his open collar. He pushes his fingers under the cloth, his thumbs touching in the dip of his collar bones. Arthur swallows, his eyes fixed on Eames’, and his tongue darts out, that tiny tell he’s been signalling to Eames with all along. Eames drops his mouth to Arthur’s quickly, just a promise. He drags his hands down Arthur’s chest under the light fabric, pauses to undo the first button. 

“You let me do this after the first time you gave me your blood in a vial.”

“I didn’t ... _let_ you ... I was … desperate for you to.” Arthur’s breath is stuttering as Eames’ hands move over his body, as he slowly unfastens his buttons and pushes the shirt aside, so he can put his mouth on Arthur’s warm, sweat-salty skin. Arthur shivers as Eames bites softly, teeth failing to find purchase on his fine muscles. He pushes the shirt down Arthur’s arms, pinning them at his sides. Arthur smiles at the echo, and Eames pulls the shirt right off and drops it to the floor, crouching and then kneeling, wrapping his hands around Arthur’s hips. It’s clear Arthur’s arousal matches his own, and Eames undoes the button at his waist and lowers the zip, letting the trousers slide down as he presses his face to Arthur’s groin, mouthing at the hot bulge in his underwear, damp already, the sharp musk of him sending a jolt up Eames’ spine. He pulls the top of Arthur’s pants down, freeing his lovely cock, rosy and leaking. A fine tremor is shaking Arthur and his hands are clamped tight on Eames’ shoulders. Eames runs the flat of his tongue up Arthur’s cock and swirls it round the head, and Arthur’s fingers dig in harder. “Eames,” he pants, “I …”

“Get on the bed.” Eames’ voice is rough, urgent.

Arthur steps out of his trousers and pushes his pants off and backs towards the bed, eyes never leaving Eames as he hurries out of his clothes and puts his hands back on Arthur, on his shoulders, leaning in to kiss him and push him onto his back. 

“Alright?” he asks.

“Yeah.” He scrambles back and Eames follows, crawling after Arthur until he is caging him against the pillows. 

“I want you to fuck me, Eames,” Arthur pants up at him — flushed, his eyes pupil-black. “Will you?”

Eames has been torn between wanting and hesitation — hesitation because of how rough the one who turned him was, revulsion at the possibility he would be like that, and because he was uncertain if Arthur would allow it.

“Yes. God, yes!”

Arthur pulls him down into a kiss, biting at his mouth, demanding. And then he trails his fingers down his jaw, reassuring. He knows how long it’s been.

“I won’t hurt you.”

Arthur frowns. “Of course you won’t.”

“I’m certain now. Here. I would have, before. Above.”

“You have exercised such restraint. You don’t have to restrain yourself anymore.”

“No. Thank you.”

He doesn’t need or want to control, but he can’t deny his fear at being immobilised by Arthur has shaken him, made reasserting his self-possession feel necessary, somehow. Arthur seems to know this, the way he knows so much about Eames’ desires, even those Eames himself has not fully understood.

Most of all, he wants the intense intimacy of the act — the giving and taking and receiving; the total connection. 

“There’s lube and condoms in the nightstand.”

He never wore a rubber, before. Of course he knows why men do, now.

“I know it’s not necessary, but I prefer it. Do you mind?” There is a tiny crease between Arthur’s brows.

“Of course not.” He leans over to open the drawer and retrieve the items. “What you need, always to hand.”

Arthur smiles, reaches up to pull Eames towards himself again, tangling his fingers in his hair, his palm cupped around his skull. “It’s been a long time for me too,” he says.

“I’ll be careful.”

“Not too careful.” 

The invitation stokes his arousal again and he backs away slightly to give himself room to look at Arthur properly: his dark hair disordered on the white pillows, a sheen of sweat at his hairline, his lips parted, his chest flushed and heaving, his lean stomach and slender hips, his thighs sprawled wide on the bed. His cock standing proud. Eames trails his hands across Arthur’s skin, from his stomach to his chest and back down, bracketing his hips, down the outside of his thighs, and back up, along the softer skin of his inner thighs, feeling under his fingertips the tremors of Arthur’s muscles. He bends, and follows the path of his hands with his mouth, pressing kisses into Arthur’s skin — worshipful, almost. He will never tire of putting his mouth on Arthur’s body: his lips, not his teeth.

When he glances up, Arthur’s eyes are fever-bright and he’s biting his lip.

“Eames … please …” He plants his feet on the mattress and lifts his hips, inviting, seeking more, offering what Eames wants.

Of course it’s utterly different from the man who stole his life after taking him violently; if he can get past that with care and tenderness Arthur will have given him yet another gift.

He reaches for the bottle of lubricant, flips the cap up and squirts some into his hand, rubs his fingers through the cool slickness.

“Eames?”

“I’m okay.” Was Arthur even asking that? But he sits up, his thighs bracketing Eames’ hips, and reaches for his hand.

“You won’t break me.”

“No. I know.”

“I want you so bad. I want you inside me, Eames.”

“Yes.”

“Come on, then.” 

Arthur wraps both their hands round Eames’ cock — blood-hot, full, leaking. Then he gropes with his other hand for the bottle and flips the lid. He takes his hand off Eames, squirts lubricant into it. He gets to his knees and reaches behind himself, eyes never leaving Eames’. The slick sound his fingers make and the look on his face, tongue teasing at his bottom lip, are intensely arousing. Eames reaches between Arthur’s thighs. Arthur stills his hand and withdraws, giving way to Eames. He rubs lightly at Arthur’s hole with the pad of his finger, sliding easily, and slips in. Arthur groans his name and lowers himself, his knees sliding wider on the sheets, face dipping forward to lean against Eames’ shoulder, hands on his thighs. He raises his weight and sinks down again, body inviting Eames in.

Arthur is in control, Eames has not taken, he has been given.

He breathes Arthur’s name and Arthur raises his head, looks into Eames’ face. “More, Eames.” His words come in panting gasps. “More, now. Please.”

Eames does as he’s told, as he is asked — withdrawing, returning, more, more, more, until Arthur is trembling and Eames is aching. 

He reaches for the condom, but its wrapper defeats him, hands clumsy with lubricant and urgency.

Arthur holds out his hand. “Let me.”

Arthur’s hands on him, performing this tiny service, almost push him over the edge and he drags in a breath to steady himself as Arthur slicks his cock with light fingers and lies back against the pillows, canting his hips up. “Please, Eames.”

He has to close his eyes, just breathe for a second. And then the head of his cock is at Arthur’s entrance and he presses forward and a crease deepens between Arthur’s brows and he takes a sharp breath. Arthur’s body resists, resists … and then yields to Eames. He smiles, almost dreamy, and sighs Eames’ name.

He moves slowly, getting used to the connection, the feel of Arthur, hot, tight; the sight of him, his skin sheened with sweat, flushed with arousal, his cock leaking, his back arching as he demands more.

Eames has felt disconnected from his body for so long, until Arthur gave it back to him, built him a place where he feels in control of it, not ruled by blood-hunger’s relentless wanting, by the fear of what he could harm with his unhuman strength. Here in Arthur’s dream, he is at home in his body, at one with its needs, unafraid of its strength. He can finally loosen the last bonds of restraint and feel every nerve singing with sensation; can allow himself to give Arthur what they both want, what they both need; can let his body take over, can let his mind rest.

He moves faster, harder, overwhelmed by the sounds of their bodies meeting, their breaths panting in counterpoint, the sharp cries Arthur is not trying to swallow down, the way his body strains towards Eames. His arousal builds like the tide filling the river — inexorable, unstoppable — until it’s crashing through him, wave after wave after wave. 

Beneath him, Arthur has his hand on himself, moving in short sharp strokes until he comes, spilling over his stomach, gasping Eames’ name.

Eames is more fully alive than he has ever been. 

Neither can look away as their breaths — grating from throats torn raw — calm and slow. With the last of his strength, Eames lifts one hand from the bed to run his fingers down Arthur’s face, down his throat, coming to rest on that place he has marked in their other world. It is unblemished here, pulse still leaping under the thin skin. 

“Darling,” is all he can say, “darling.”

—— 

The quality of the light is like sadness when he opens his eyes on the bed in his London basement. They were lying together on the Tuscan bed, Arthur’s head on his chest, hand loosely curled on his stomach, as the dream ran out. But here they are clothed, not naked and sweating; the air is cold and dead, not rich with the hot scent of sex, and his mouth is on Arthur’s blemished throat. He sits up, wipes the trickle of blood away with his thumb, that old gesture.

Are Arthur’s eyes unfocused, hazy with being stolen from?

“Arthur?” Terror beats at Eames. “Arthur! Are you—” He can’t name it, won’t name it.

Arthur sits up too, blinks, comes back to himself.

“I’m fine, Eames, I’m fine.” 

Eames lays his hand on Arthur’s throat — it is still warm, the pulse steady.

“I’m fine,” Arthur says again, curling his fingers round Eames’ wrist. He removes the cannula from his hand, wincing slightly. “But I don’t think you are.”

“No.” Eames can hear how dull his voice sounds. Flat and grey like the light. It is even harder now, to wake to his reality after feeling alive for so long — long enough to sleep and wake and sleep and wake, again and again, long enough that sleeping felt right, and not like a waste. Long enough to learn things about himself, about Arthur, that have profoundly altered what is between them. Long enough to declare themselves.

And yet here they are, still trapped.

“No.” 

They lay down together here fifteen minutes ago. A quarter of an hour. No time at all. But they lived in sunlight for a week. And it’s not the sunlight he will miss, but Arthur’s living skin against his living skin. The face in the mirror he was starting to get to know again. The freedom from restraint.

Mere moments ago, they were lying together in a haze of pleasure, their breaths slowing as their hearts stopped racing. Now he has no heartbeat, no breath, no warmth, no life.

“Eames? We’ll find a way.”

He wants to believe Arthur. He said he would try to.

“Alright,” he says. He wishes he could sound less flat and hopeless. 

“Let’s go to bed,” says Arthur. “I have an idea.” He goes to the chest of drawers where Eames made space for him to unpack and roots around, tossing a thick grey sweatshirt and pants onto the bed. “I won’t be cold now. Not sure why I didn’t think of that before.” He strips off and dresses in the shapeless garments. 

Eames gets off the bed and strips down too. When he lies down again, Arthur pulls him close, fitting his body round Eames’. 

“I’ll have to get some like yours,” he says, and feels the puff of warm breath on the nape of his neck as Arthur laughs. 

“I’ll buy them tomorrow.” 

It’s almost as good as being in Arthur’s arms in the bed in the pink room, or the Tuscan room. He listens to his even breaths as he waits for unconsciousness to take him. 

*

Eames thought Arthur might go out, escape the dark of the flat, feel the light of the declining London summer on his face, but he stays in, on the sofa with his laptop, a hand curled around Eames’ ankle as he sits pretending to read — in reality, unable to focus through the grey fog. It’s horribly similar to those dark days after he tried to end things with Arthur. Not quite as bad, because Arthur is here, not just arguing with him in his head, but the loss of what they had in his dream is bitter.

After several hours, Arthur sets the computer aside. “I’ve ordered some stuff,” he says. “And done a bit more research. The next part of what I need to find out is a bit harder. I have to ask some questions that people aren’t going to like.” He scowls. “I won’t lie, my idea is risky.” 

Eames wants to protest, but Arthur holds up a hand in a silencing gesture. “Can I explain?” 

“Of course, sorry.”

He reaches for Eames’ hand, turns it over, tracing the life line etched into the palm. Eames’ little finger curls in, relic of a childhood accident. “Beautiful hands,” Arthur murmurs, as if to himself, then he looks up at Eames again.

“My idea is a way to get more time, a lot of time, far more than we could safely have dreaming the normal way, even with two levels—”

“Arthur!”

“You said you would try to believe that I could choose to take risks, even big risks, for you. That you are worth that. Okay, what I’m thinking of will need you to really believe that. It’s hard to explain, and I don’t fully understand it myself.”

Eames has to honour his promise.

“Alright, tell me.”

“Okay.” Arthur brings Eames’ hand to his mouth, presses his lips to Eames’ knuckles, as if he’s trying to steady himself. “Okay. Do you remember how Yusuf was really insistent that we avoid danger? That we really didn’t want to get injured, or worse, die in a second-level dream?”

“I remember. I didn’t understand what he was going on about, but he was pretty vehement.”

Arthur nods. “Yeah. With good reason. He said that using his special formulation with the sedative meant that getting hurt — no, dying — in that sort of dream would be really dangerous. Remember how getting hurt in a normal dream doesn’t actually hurt you in reality?”

“And dying is a way to get out in a hurry, I remember. I thought that sounded awful.”

“Yeah, it’s not fun, but you kind of get used to it. I haven’t done it often, but it’s an option. But Yusuf was sure that dying in a sedated dream wouldn’t end the dream. He thought — and I really don’t know if he had any proof or if he was just extrapolating — that if you die in a sedated dream you drop into what we call limbo.”

“Where the unbaptised go, not Hell, but not Heaven?”

“No. Well, sort of. It’s supposed to be a kind of blank, unconstructed dream space. Not formed deliberately by a dreamer.”

“What the hell, Arthur!”

“I know. Under normal circumstances, you’d want to avoid that. But what if we went there, together.”

“To a blank, formless place you know nothing about? That’s not living, Arthur.”

“But neither is what you have here. And we’d be together. And I think we might be able to build together, there. I think it would be worth trying. Both our imaginations creating a place that would be just ours. And time, that’s the point. We’d have time together.”

“Time? How much time? Months?”

“Years. Decades, maybe.”

“I’ve already had decades of an unreal existence.”

“We could grow old together.”

There it is, what Eames really wants. What he has not allowed himself to fantasise about. A chance to grow old. To escape this stasis.

His voice is rough as he says: “Don’t say that, if you don’t know. Don’t promise that. Please, I couldn’t bear it, if it just meant you’d be stuck never changing. Then we’d both be in the same place as I am now. With added sunlight. Maybe. It might just be a grey fog, for all you know.”

Eames turns his face away. 

“You’re right. I don’t know. But there are people I could ask. It won’t be easy. They might refuse to discuss it. Yusuf might know more than he’s saying. But I think he’d be the least likely to tell me, actually. Because he wouldn’t want to be responsible. He’s out there on the edges, but he might want a bigger profile. I think he agreed to give us his drug because he hopes I’ll tell Dom. If the best extractor endorses his formulation, he’d be made.”

“Who else is there? Dom? You said he and his wife were doing dangerous things.” It’s treacherous territory to enter, but he has to go there, if they are being honest with each other.

“Yes. I think Dom knows more than he’s said. But there’s someone else. He’s sort of the theorist of dreamshare. Mal’s father. He’s a weird guy. Teaches in Paris, and does dream research on the quiet. If anyone really knows what limbo’s like, he’s the one.”

“Really hard to raise it though. Given what you said happened to your friend. To Mal.”

“Yes. But the thing is, I think he might tell. Dreamshare, it’s kind of his baby, and he’s pretty unscrupulous. He might grab at the chance to get some hard data.” Arthur snorts an almost-laugh. Then he sobers. “It’s so complicated, tied up with Mal. I think she and Dom got into some really extended dreams.”

“And she forgot what was real.”

“Yes. And she laid this complicated trail, that implicated Dom in her death somehow.” He scrubs his hand down his face. “She jumped out of a window in a high-rise hotel. On their anniversary.”

“Arthur.” Eames doesn’t know what to say. He never does, about this awful wound in Arthur’s heart.

“I really don’t believe he had anything directly to do with it. But they did get into the extended dreams together.”

“You don’t want to hear me say this, but you are proposing to take this same risk.”

“Okay, it was wrong of me to shut you down like I did. But I really do think it’s different. We’re different. We have a better reason to do it. They were just seeing how far they could push the boundaries. Maybe Miles — Mal’s father — maybe he instigated it.”

“If that’s true, what makes you think he’ll tell you anything?”

“I told you, he’s a weird, unscrupulous guy. He might think I’d find stuff out that would help other people avoid what happened to Mal. Or he might just be too curious to pass up the opportunity to gain knowledge, at no risk to himself.”

“So you write to this unscrupulous old man, this bereaved old man, and ask him, what? How do I plunge into this ‘limbo’? What’s it like? How do I get back out? I assume you want to get back out? And go on with your life?” Eames feels a bit hysterical. It’s absurd to be discussing this at all. He’s used to absurd, though, god knows.

“Yes.” Arthur is perfectly serious. “Yes. That’s what I’ll ask.”

“You won’t tell him why you need to know? So you can help your … help me escape purgatory.”

“Maybe I should. What’s more outlandish, what he does or what you are? Maybe I’ll tell him the whole problem.”

“You shouldn’t joke, Arthur.”

“No, I shouldn’t. I’m sorry. I want to do this for you so badly, and he really is the best person to ask.”

*

They go out walking at night together, and Arthur goes out during the day sometimes. He buys a few things to replace ones that Eames threw out long ago, the reminders of what he no longer was, the plates and cups he had no need of. Arthur buys a kettle, and Eames makes tea, holding the cup’s heat cradled in his hands, letting the fragrant steam curl up. Now that he has had this, and could again, the reminder is sweet rather than bitter.

“I’ve missed this,” Arthur says, making a sandwich: slicing a tomato, spreading butter. “Hotel room service gets old.”

Eames, leaning against the doorframe of the tiny kitchen, has no opinion on room service. Arthur’s life has been completely different from his own — back when he had a life, he didn’t have that sort of life. But he has also missed domesticity more than he allowed himself to acknowledge. He washes the plate and the knives and the cups when Arthur has finished.

“Has your dream expert replied to your enquiry?” he asks in bed, both of them clad in thick fabric to shield Arthur from his chill, Eames curved around Arthur’s back and arse, his knees tucked in behind Arthur’s.

“No, difficult bastard.” He turns his head to look at Eames. “I’ll tell you as soon as I hear. I won’t keep anything from you.”

“What will you do now? If he won’t tell you?”

Arthur scowls. “I’ll phone him. He’ll have to tell me something if we’re talking, he won’t be able to dodge me. And besides, he likes me.”

“Mmmm.” Eames drops a kiss into Arthur’s hair, curling over his nape, long and free. “Of course he does, darling.” A shiver runs through him at saying the word, after what they admitted to each other in his dream. Arthur picks up the hand Eames has curled around his waist, brings it to his mouth and kisses the palm. He presses it to his chest, and Eames feels its steady beat as he slides into unconsciousness.

*

Arthur sits at the table with his phone; Eames is on the sofa with a book, but Arthur beckons him over. He scowls and drums his fingers on the wood as the phone rings, until finally an older man’s voice says: “Miles.” Impatient at being interrupted, tinny through the phone. 

“Hello, Miles, it’s Arthur.”

“Arthur! Where are you? Are you ... is Dom—?”

“I’m not with Dom at the moment.”

“Oh?”

“I needed some time in one place, do some research, catch my breath.”

“Dom didn’t say anything. You two didn’t fall out, did you?”

“No. Nothing like that.” Arthur rolls his eyes. “How’re the kids?”

“Growing up far too fast.” 

Arthur frowns. “Yes. I miss them.”

“Tell Dom that,” Miles says, a touch sharply. “They miss their father. But you didn’t ring to ask about Dom’s kids. What do you want, Arthur?”

“I’m doing some research like I said. Have you ever looked into deeper dreaming, more levels? It seems to me that might be a way to extract stuff that’s more … um, heavily protected.”

He’s looking at Eames while he says this, a crease between his brows as he tries to say enough but not too much. Eames puts his hand over Arthur’s fidgeting fingers and Arthur turns his palm up and holds on.

“Two levels?” says Miles. “Interesting idea, but difficult. What have you tried?”

“How do you know I’ve tried?”

“Come on, Arthur, of course you have. What did you and Dom do?”

“Dom and I haven’t done anything like that.”

“He and Mal … surely he’s told you.”

“He hasn’t really. What did he tell you?”

Miles clears his throat. “You know I didn’t believe … what she wanted us to believe, that he was responsible.”

“Neither do I,” says Arthur.

“Yes, well. Not everyone takes too kindly to that, believing him over my own daughter. And he’s not blameless! But Mal, she was too much like her old dad. Too curious. She always wanted to know more, always had another question. Drove me mad when she was a kid: ‘why? how? where? But why, Papa?’ And on and on.”

Arthur smiles, but his eyes are sad. “Yeah,” he says softly.

“But when she followed me into dream research, I was sure she’d be the one who would make the biggest breakthroughs. Maybe she would have, on her own. She and Dom, it wasn’t really research. They were greedy for more time with each other. Most people, when they have kids, they regret that they can’t pursue all their dreams, that there’s no time for all the self-indulgent things they still wanted to do. But of course, with our dreams, you can have both.”

“So they were dreaming at deeper levels?”

“Yes. She once said to me: ‘Papa, I’ve already grown old with him. He’s a great architect. Isn’t it wonderful, we can have it all?’.” He falls silent. “Except they couldn’t.”

“No. God, Miles, I miss her.”

The silence stretches out until Arthur frowns and says: “But she did tell you how they did it? I don’t believe she wouldn’t have. They were going under for hours at a time, but that’s not long enough to grow old together.”

Eames tightens his grip on Arthur’s hand. 

“Limbo is long enough.” Miles’ voice is hard. 

“So they did it? She told you how? And how they came back? They didn’t get stuck there.”

“Mal’s mind did.”

“Yes.”

“So don’t do anything bloody stupid, Arthur. I’ve got to go. Come and visit some time.”

“Yeah, I will. Goodbye Miles.”

Arthur pokes at the phone’s screen, ending the call.

“Better than nothing, I guess,” he says. “They did get back out.”

Eames would just as soon not get back out, but he has always known Arthur would leave, eventually. And he has no right to imagine it should be different. A lifetime with Arthur, and Arthur having his actual lifetime as well. If he is like Dom, and not like Mal.

“Eames, they were able to get out. They worked it out.” Arthur’s face is lit with a fierce excitement. “We don’t need to know ahead of time how, we’ll figure it out. There’s no reason to wait.”

The body he has in the real world doesn’t really react like a normal body, but Eames has recent experience of his real body. His chest feels tight, as if his heart is too large to be contained by its cage. The hold he has on Arthur’s hand is too tight, but he cannot loosen his grip. Arthur half stands and leans across the table and kisses Eames: hard, biting at his mouth, and then softening, tender. And he says, his mouth buzzing against Eames’: “Come live with me”.

If Eames could weep, he would weep with gratitude. He pushes the feeling of being unworthy of the risk away and stands up to follow Arthur to the bedroom.

“Isn’t there someone you should tell, that you will be away?”

A complicated emotion crosses Arthur’s face.

“No one will notice I’m gone,” he says. “Eames, it’ll be hardly any time at all, here. I don’t think Dom and Mal ever dreamed longer than a day. But anyway, there’s no one I need to tell.”

“Not even Dom?”

Arthur frowns. “Especially not him.”

“Because he would try to stop you.”

Arthur is concentrating on the PASIV case. He doesn’t reply.

“What if something does go wrong?”

“It won’t. And I’ll be with _you.”_ Arthur’s voice has taken on the stubborn edge Eames doesn’t much like. He doesn’t want to spoil what they are about to do together, so he doesn’t respond, instead fetching the blood kit from the drawer where they keep it. 

He last drank two days ago. Will this be the last time ever? 

Arthur sits on the bed and rolls up his sleeve. The repeated needle sticks have left a scar in the crook of his elbow. Eames touches a fingertip lightly to it as he positions the strap and inserts the needle. Soon it will be Arthur who marks him with his ropes.

After he drinks Arthur’s blood he is tempted to smash the crystal glass to celebrate the finality of the moment. He restrains himself though. It’s not the end of them here. They will come back and Arthur will go on. Maybe he will return sometimes. Eames would still have need of the glass, then.

Arthur has the PASIV set up and ready, with Yusuf’s drug in the chamber. The bottle it came in is almost empty. He picks up the line and inserts the needle into the back of his hand, and reaches for the timer. 

“How long are you going to set it for?”

“Limbo’s basically endless, until you find a way out. If we went straight there, we wouldn’t need very much time on this timer. But I know so little about it. It might be terrible, at least for a time. I think, from what I have read and gleaned from hints Dom and Mal dropped, that we might have to build it into somewhere we could be happy. It might not be … pleasant, at least to start with.”

“So the sooner we get there, if it’s a ‘there’ at all, the sooner we start creating a place for us. Can’t we just go into your dream, and into mine and then just continue on?”

“Just plunge in?” Arthur smiles a quarter, that intriguing quirk of his mouth that hooked Eames in the casino. “But there’s something I want, with you, that I’d rather—”

“Rather do in your bed in Tuscany?”

“Yes.”

“I want that too. And I would like to give you what I couldn’t last time, with the ropes.”

Arthur’s smile widens, softens. “Really?”

Eames nods.

“So you see, we need time in my house, and time in your house.”

“Before we take the plunge, the leap of faith?”

“Yes. And we need to decide how.”

“I trust you with that.”

Arthur shakes his head. “No, we have to decide together. Should we have decided already?”

“Not here. I already died here once.”

“No, okay. But we do have to decide, so we know what we need.”

“But as to the time on this—” Eames gestures at the PASIV “—we still can’t put hours on it.” He drifts his fingers lightly over the mark of his teeth on Arthur’s throat. “We don’t need a week in my dream, just long enough, if we might not get a chance to—”

“I don’t need to bind you now, I can wait. There will be other times. In future.”

“Yes. But I want to give it to you now. My fear was groundless, I knew it even then.”

“I’m glad you told me, got me to stop. I was wrong to lose focus on you.”

“Yes, well, we’ll fix that. And we won’t wake up too soon. I’ll be able to see the marks you make.”

“Okay, yeah. So, I’ll put an hour on? We’ll have plenty of time in my house, and then you dream your house, we spend some time there, and then we … take the plunge.”

Neither of them really wants to say: “Kill ourselves.” It’s painfully real for both of them.

An hour is a risk to Arthur, but what he’s promising is too much to resist, even if Eames was stronger than he is. He couldn’t resist the pull of Arthur back when they first met, when he should have walked away; of course he can’t resist it now.

“Alright, an hour.”

Arthur turns the dial, presses the button and lies back. Eames puts his mouth on the mark he’s made so many times. _Please god it’s the last time he has to break Arthur’s skin like this._

—— 

They are naked on the bed in the Tuscan room. The light is dim and intimate, the sheets disordered. It is as if they never left. 

Arthur gets up on one elbow, looking down at Eames. “My subconscious isn’t very subtle,” he says, and his smile has a sharp edge. “Sorry.”

“Don’t be.” A shudder of anticipation shakes Eames’ spine.

He has wanted what Arthur wants to give him here since long before the last time they were in this bed — when Arthur gave him the gift of profound connection, the gift of his body, the gift of Eames’ own body — the ability to express his desire without fear of hurting, of going too far, of taking too much. 

He wants everything from Arthur, all the control and mastery Arthur wants to exert. And then, back in his own house of dreams, he wants to submit to Arthur in their other way, endure the bindings again, give him what he could not last time. 

Arthur is risking so much for Eames, and asking very little in return: only what he has always asked for, Eames’ trust. His trust in Arthur’s skill, in his restraint, in his regard. In his love.

Arthur sits up, placing a hand on Eames’ chest, keeping him on his back. A frown flits across his face, as if he is debating something with himself. Eames relaxes his hands at his sides, palms up, quiescent, and Arthur smiles, bending down and kissing him. “I’m in your hands,” Eames says. 

Arthur nods, and positions Eames’ arms above his head, spanning both wrists with one strong hand as he leans in again, biting softly at Eames’ mouth, and then harder, pushing in as his other hand moves down, pressing at his throat just hard enough to make Eames swallow, feeling the resistance. And then Arthur’s hand has moved on, down his chest, brushing across his nipples, tweaking one, and when Eames arches into the touch, pinching the other harder. He chases Arthur’s mouth when he ends the kiss, sitting up.

He leans over to the nightstand and Eames lifts his head, trying to see if he is retrieving the lubricant, but in Arthur’s hand is his dark red tie, the tie he gave to Eames. 

“May I?” he asks.

Binding needn’t be sexual, Arthur told him, but the first time he bound Eames with this tie, it was, and just the sight of it — darkblood red like a wound — is powerfully arousing.

“Please.” His breath is short as Arthur binds the silk around one wrist and then the other. He fastens the end of the tie to the bedhead.

“Okay?” Arthur slips his fingers under the silk, testing. 

Eames nods and then, remembering, gasps out: “Yes.”

“Good.” Arthur bends to his mouth again. “Good.” His breath whispers across Eames’ lips.

Eames raises his hips, asking as Arthur asked, for more, for his hand, for his cock.

Arthur, kneeling on the bed next to him, lifts one knee, swings his leg across Eames’ body, straddling his chest, his knees gripping Eames’ sides, his cock almost in his face. Eames’ mouth waters and he lifts his head again, straining towards Arthur, but with his hands bound, he must wait to be given what he wants, what Arthur knows he wants. He licks his bottom lip — mimicking Arthur’s tell.

Arthur wraps his hand around his cock and brings it to Eames’ mouth, just the tip, trailed, leaking, across his eager lips. He groans as Arthur withdraws, and then, smiling, returns, pushing in, but careful, perhaps mindful of how Eames’ body has betrayed him before. Eames locks eyes with Arthur, and leans forward as much as he can and Arthur meets him, his thighs working as he rocks slowly forward and back, fucking Eames’ mouth. Eames brings his knees up and Arthur leans back against them, withdrawing again. Eames’ cock is pushing at the cleft of Arthur’s arse, but that’s not what he wants, not what Arthur wants. And much as he adores having Arthur in his mouth, he wants Arthur deeper inside him. He tips his chin up and back, breaking their contact. Arthur smiles, intent, and puts his weight on his hands, braced on Eames’s shoulders, pressing him down into the bed again. “Another time,” he says, lifting one hand and dragging the thumb across Eames’ mouth, wiping away the saliva pooling in the corners of his lips. He indicates Eames’ bound wrists. “Are you still okay?”

Eames flexes his shoulders. “Yes. Thank you.” It’s not comfortable, but being under Arthur’s control, his to pleasure however he chooses, is too powerful to relinquish. He slides his feet down the bed, and Arthur walks backwards on his knees, trailing his hands down Eames’ body as he goes, twin paths of heat and sensation and anticipation. 

His hands have been all over Eames, but not yet on his cock. He’s aching to be touched — every caress of Arthur’s hands, the way his knees bracket his chest, his waist, his hips, his thighs, coiling his arousal tighter tighter tighter. 

Arthur shifts, pressing Eames’ legs apart, his hands brushing lightly over the sensitive soft skin at the very top of his thighs, briefly cradling his balls — every touch maddeningly not quite enough. He’s hovering at the edge of a dizzying drop, tense with need.

And then Arthur’s fingers skate across the exquisitely tender space behind his balls and rub delicately at his hole. Eames takes a ragged hissing breath and Arthur stills, and then continues, his fingers dragging at the tight furl of his arse, his own breath loud. Eames has his eyes closed, concentrating entirely on the feel of Arthur’s hands, almost afraid of the intensity of Arthur’s focus. His body wants to clutch at Arthur, invite him in. 

He almost whines when Arthur takes his hand away. He opens his eyes and lifts his head as Arthur pushes at his knees, splaying them wider. He has never been put on display like this, so open and vulnerable before another person, nowhere to hide. But Arthur is looking into Eames’ eyes as he runs his hands down his thighs and back up. “Okay?” he asks. Eames nods, and lifts his hips, offering himself. Arthur smiles.

The sound of the bottle cap being flipped open is startling. Arthur’s hand returns, cool and slick. Eames watches every shift in his face, the way he frowns in concentration, his tongue caressing his bottom lip, and smiles as he presses the tip of one finger into Eames.

Eames can’t help his gasp. It has been so long. 

Arthur stops, but he doesn’t withdraw. His other hand is on the crease of his thigh, he rubs his thumb firmly along it. “Eames?”

“Yes.” He tilts his hips up again, pushing towards Arthur’s hand. Wanting more. Needing more. Chasing more. “Please.” 

“Eames,” Arthur breathes, pulling back, returning, “Eames. Eames.” Again and again. It’s overwhelming. It’s not enough.

“Arrrthuuur.” He’s begging shamelessly now.

Arthur crooks his finger.

Eames’ whole body jerks, the binding tightening on his wrists as he pulls against it, caught between sensations, chasing Arthur’s hand as he withdraws.

And returns — a slow push, more … more … more.

“Ar—!”

So full, but not full enough.

“Please, now, please.”

“Yes, now.” Again Arthur takes his hand away, leaving Eames empty, hungry for more, greedy to be filled. The hand on his thigh is gone too as Arthur leans back, groping in the sheets. The condom wrapper’s crinkle is loud.

Eames wishes he could help, straining against the tie.

“Do you want—?”

_To be unbound?_

“No!”

Arthur kneels above him, eyes hooded as he rolls the condom on and strokes himself.

And then he leans down, one hand on Eames’ chest, and kisses him, deep and slow.

“Okay?”

“Now, please, Arthur. Please.”

Arthur leans back, his hand now on Eames’ hip, now on his inner thigh, eyes never leaving his face. He nods, and then his cock is pushing at Eames’ arse. He stills, just for a moment, and then he presses in, relentless, but slow enough to let Eames adjust.

Eames forgets to breathe, until Arthur snaps his hips, and Eames drags in a shuddering lungful of air. Arthur’s hands clamp round his hips, holding him steady as he starts to move.

Bound as he is, he surrenders entirely to Arthur, totally in his hands, full of Arthur, surrounded by him. Suspended on the edge of release. And still Arthur has not touched his cock. 

With a sharp thrust, and another, and another, Arthur throws back his head and comes with a wordless cry. 

He drops his head forward, panting harshly, his weight on Eames’ hips. And finally, reaches for Eames’ cock. One, two, three firm strokes is all he needs … breath punched out of him, he can’t even form Arthur’s name as he climaxes.

For a minute, there is only the sound of their breaths. Arthur has flopped down next to Eames, one hand still on his hip. But soon he sits up and reaches for the tie binding his wrists.

“May I?”

Eames nods, and Arthur unties the knot securing it to the bed and lowers Eames’ hands, still bound, to his chest, closing a hand around his wrists briefly before getting to work on the knots, tightened by the way he strained against the binding.

“Thank you,” Eames says as the second knot opens. His hands fall to his sides, the same position he placed himself in right at the very beginning. His shoulders ache. “I liked it. Being bound. Very much,” he says.

“So did I.” Arthur leans over and drops a kiss on his temple before getting off the bed and walking to the bathroom, returning with a glass of water and a cloth that he uses to wipe Eames clean. He is terribly thirsty — it is always a strange sensation, the first drink here. When he is finished, Arthur takes the glass and sets it down, getting into the bed and pulling the covers up. Eames turns on his side, raising a hand to smooth Arthur’s hair off his forehead. There is a red weal around his wrist. He circles the fingers of his other hand over it and can’t help smiling. “Marked.”

Arthur smiles too and wraps his fingers around the other weal.

Eames closes his eyes, but before he slides onto sleep, there is something he needs to tell Arthur. It’s easier to say in the privacy of the darkness behind his eyelids.

“I think I’ve told you that the one who turned me was rough, that first night. He took without asking. And the next, when I went back, already trapped. And I have always wondered if that was the way I would also be—”

“That’s why—”

“Why I never let myself ... up there.”

“But you weren’t.”

“No.”

“But Eames, I was—”

“Not too gentle. And I liked it, the way you handled me. You didn’t do anything I didn’t want. You asked permission. I told you I was in your hands. I meant it. It was very … arousing, very satisfying.”

He tightens his fingers on the mark encircling his wrist.

“Good,” says Arthur. Tightening his fingers on the other mark. “I thought it might be, for you. I knew it would be, for me.”

Eames looks into Arthur’s nightdark eyes then, the eyes of the man who is willing to risk so much to free him from bondage. “You see me so clearly. Thank you.”

“You give me so much too, Eames. With you I don’t need to hide any part of myself.”

Eames doesn’t try to deflect, he understands now.

He falls asleep with his wrists held in both their hands.

*

It is still dark when he wakes, pulled from unconsciousness by sudden terror that they will have wasted the time on the PASIV and be forced to wake yet again on the bed in his flat, perhaps doomed never to reach the strange place Arthur has promised him.

They are still facing each other. He reaches out and touches Arthur’s face. He is instantly awake. “Eames?”

“Shouldn’t we go, continue on? Won’t the time run out if we stay here?”

“Shit!” Arthur sits up and fumbles on the bedside table for the watch he wasn’t wearing when they arrived, and squinting at it. “We’ve been here about four hours. We’ve got four times longer on the PASIV than last time, if we stayed here,we’d have … about ten hours; but there’s no reason to linger here.”

“But if we could, if we had time to sleep and wake here it would be—” He wants to sleep and wake in this bed, where Arthur has given him so much; wants to wake with the scent of sex lingering in the air, in this house, Arthur’s house.

“We have time, Eames, we have enough time to stay here, if that’s what you want.”

“It is.” 

Arthur lies back down with his head pillowed on Eames’ chest.

*

Eames is woken by strong light streaming in the window. This may be Arthur’s house, but it is perfect for Eames, with all its light. He hopes that where they’re going, it will at least be light. Even without light, though, he will have Arthur’s living warmth, next to his own living warmth. 

Arthur is still asleep, lying on his back with one arm thrown above his head. His hair, dream-long, is a tousled mess. The man who caught Eames’ eye in the casino was so tightly controlled, every hair in place, tie precisely knotted, careful with his Scotch, giving away only quarter-smiles. 

_‘With you I don’t need to hide any part of myself.’_

Two men long used to concealing so many parts of themselves, who no longer need to hide.

Eames strokes the back of his fingers down Arthur’s face. He wakes and smiles up at him.

“Take me to your house, Eames.”

“Like this?” Eames gestures at their nakedness.

“Dress us however you like.”

“Alright.” Eames gets off the bed and goes to the armoire where the PASIV is stored.

“God, you’re gorgeous.” Arthur’s eyes roam across his body as he carries the case back and sets it on the bed. “Sorry. That was a bit crude of me.” He grins, and gets up to open the case and unwind the tubing.

Eames knows where they will enter his house. Anticipation coils in his chest. He sits on the edge of the bed while Arthur concentrates on the device, pouring the drug into the chamber and fitting cannulas to the tubing. His eyes are also roaming over naked skin and lean muscle.

Finally, Arthur has everything ready. “There’s just one more thing. We need a music cue to the dream ending. Something that will play here, and we will hear there and be prepared. Not like last time.”

Eames hasn’t thought about the dream ending, although he knows it must. They may be in the Limbo world for years, decades even, but their bodies are still on the bed in London and the time on that PASIV will wind down and Arthur will go on with his life. As he must.

“Alright, what will it be? You choose.”

There’s a complicated look in Arthur’s eyes. “There was a song Mal used to use. Do you know Edith Piaf?”

“ _Non, je ne regrette rien?”_ It’s a guess.

“Yes.” Arthur smiles, the sad smile that so often accompanies his memories of his friend. “We could use that. It’s true, you know.”

“Yes, it is.”

The brassy notes of the tune drift through the house, fading away before the first words of the song.

“It’s ready.” Arthur takes Eames’ hand, running his thumb across the knuckles, slipping the needle smoothly under his skin, before efficiently inserting his own. Eames moves backwards on the bed until he’s leaning against the pillows, and Arthur follows, reaching over to press the button on the PASIV. Eames takes his hand. His heart is banging in his chest.

———

He is seated on the wooden chair, looking straight at his reflection in the mirrored wall. He’s not naked anymore, instead clad in a pair of black briefs like Arthur’s. Arthur stands behind him, his hand on Eames’ shoulder.

“My subconscious isn’t very subtle either. But I’m not sorry. Let me give you what I couldn’t last time.” He lays his hand over Arthur’s, the pulse in his wrist beating against his heart pumping blood through his body, beating hard with nerves.

“Thank you.” Arthur’s fingers tighten on his shoulder, and then he comes to stand in front of Eames. “If I bind your legs first, perhaps you won’t feel so trapped.”

“Alright. I do know you would not leave me.” Arthur is so close, he has to tilt his head back to look up at him.

“But still. I don’t want you to be uncomfortable.” 

Eames puts his hands on Arthur’s hips and leans his forehead against his taut stomach. Arthur’s hand pushes through his hair. Eames can feel his tight-stretched nerves relax, his shoulders drop, his mind calm.

“Ready?” Arthur’s voice is quiet.

“Ready.” He lifts his hands away and sits back in the chair.

Holding a hank of undyed rope, Arthur comes to kneel in front of Eames. He puts a hand on his thigh, and then he places the doubled end of the rope just above his knees and begins the complex pattern that binds his legs together. The design looks like a backbone. After every knot Arthur touches Eames’ thigh, looks up him, asks: “Okay?” And Eames nods, “yes”. He watches them in the mirror: the sweeping line of Arthur’s back, the knobs of his spine visible in his bent neck, the way the muscles move in his shoulders as he passes the rope round Eames’ calves and forms the knots. And he looks at his own face, the face he does not know well. It is not a face of fear. His eyes are hooded, his mouth holds no tension. He closes his eyes then, sinks into the calm of being in Arthur’s sure hands, feels the rope as it moves across his skin, the warmth of Arthur’s closeness, the deft movements of his hands.

“Eames? Are you still okay?”

“Mmhm.”

Arthur’s hands close around his ankles. “Just one more knot.”

He opens his eyes and looks at them both, bound together as tightly as if the rope passed around both their bodies. The room is shadowed, the single lamp casts an intimate pool of warm light. It is a beautiful picture. Eames commits it to memory.

Arthur ties the final knot, which holds his ankles tightly together, and looks up at him, his expression revealing the same deep, deep calm Eames feels.

“Thank you,” they both say, their voices sliding together.

For several minutes the only sound in the room is their slow breaths, until Eames says, tentative: “Arthur? Will you do the other one now?”

“Yes, I will bind your arms.”

The first time Arthur bound his arms, he asked Eames to kneel. The second time, and the last time, Eames remained standing as Arthur created the complex barred pattern encasing his torso and imobilising his arms. He cannot kneel, and with his knees bent by the tie, he cannot stand. He waits for Arthur to show him what to do.

Arthur stands up, a fluid, graceful movement. 

“I want to bind your arms behind your back, like the first time. Will you sit on the floor for me?”

“Yes.”

“Will you let me help you?”

“Of course.”

“Lean against me.” Arthur wraps his arms around Eames’ back and helps him off the chair and onto the straw matting covering the floor. 

The position is awkward and undignified, but Eames pushes that thought from his mind as Arthur kneels behind him, holding the doubled rope — the same dark red as the ones in London — against his chest, reaching round to make the first bar, passing the rope to his back, where Eames has folded his arms into position ready to receive the first knot securing his left wrist, and then his right, and then once more around his chest and upper arms. Arthur’s head is bowed and his hair sweeps across Eames’ shoulder as he ties the next knot and the next. 

And then he stills, and Eames opens his eyes to see himself. He is completely unable to move, but in place of the near-panic that engulfed him the last time, is a deep peace, a feeling of being in exactly the place he is meant to be. He feels the discomfort in his shoulders, in his knees, in his ankles — forced …. no, not forced, coaxed into positions of Arthur’s choosing. Arthur’s weight is against his back, pressing against his arms, Arthur’s arms around his chest, Arthur’s hands on his skin.

Arthur speaks, his voice very quiet. “Most people translate _Kinbaku_ as tight binding. But it can also mean deep binding. If one is lucky enough to find the perfect partner, the connection forged is profound. I am lucky.”

Eames almost cannot speak, but he says: “No such thing as luck.”

“No.” Arthur smiles: a quarter, a half, that completely serious smile of his. 

Eames keeps looking into his nightdark eyes. The time that passes could be short, or long. It is, finally, enough.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [we own the night](https://archiveofourown.org/works/25645315) by [ideare](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ideare/pseuds/ideare)




End file.
